Chapter 9 - LOT publications

Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans
(178)
ek kan maar dit afhaal?
I can just it off-take
‘It’s OK for me to take this off?’
(179) Target:
*waar die yskas dan?
waar is die yskas dan?
where the fridge then
where be the fridge then
‘Where is the fridge then?’
(180)
kan ek nie dit ander mense nie?
can I not this/it other people not?
Regarding the prediction in terms of the RDDR that Afrikaans-speaking
children with SLI have difficulties understanding and producing passive
constructions, this is difficult to assess, seeing that passives occurred at a
very low rate in the language of all three groups of children, even in that
of the typically developing 6-year-olds. In total, only one “full” passive
construction was found in the first 30 minutes of the 45 language
samples (22.5 hours in total).
As stated above, a third consequence of the RDDR would be that
Afrikaans-speaking children with SLI experience problems in
interpreting and producing constructions in which co-referential
relationships occur. As was the case for passive constructions, these
constructions were not tested by the experimental tasks, so evidence
needs to be sought in the language samples. Like passive constructions,
constructions in which co-referential relationships occur were not
produced frequently – eight times in total in the first 30 minutes of the
language samples: twice by typically developing 6-year-olds; twice by 4-
year-olds; and four times by children with SLI (in total, seven children
produced a construction in which co-referential relationships occurred).
Of these eight constructions, not one contained a –self form (as in Hy
trek homself aan ‘He dresses himself’); all eight were mekaar ‘each other /
one another’ forms as in (181), produced by a typically developing 6-
year-old girl. One of these, produced by a boy with SLI and given in
(182), was ungrammatical.
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