Chapter 9 - LOT publications

Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans
Finally, as noted above, Gopnik’s Feature Deficit Hypothesis does not
seem to offer any account for the difficulties children with SLI
experience with the production and interpretation of question
constructions, (non-)co-referential relationships, and passive
constructions. Accordingly, it is not clear whether, on this hypothesis,
Afrikaans-speaking children with SLI should experience difficulties in
this regard when compared to their typically developing peers.
9.4.3. Are the predictions of the Feature Deficit Hypothesis for
Afrikaans borne out?
There were at least five predictions made about the language of
Afrikaans-speaking children with SLI, in terms of Gopnik’s Feature
Deficit Hypothesis. The first was that such children should find it
difficult to consistently use the correct singular vs. plural forms of nouns;
hence, they would have to rely on memorisation to determine the plural
form of each noun. Recall that, due to the nature of the Afrikaans plural
system, the actual prediction is that Afrikaans-speaking children with and
without SLI should demonstrate more or less the same level of accuracy
in using plural forms. This prediction was not borne out by the
Afrikaans data: The 6-year-olds with SLI were outperformed by those
without SLI.
The second prediction concerned grammatical gender. As such gender is
not encoded in Afrikaans, it was predicted that the language of
Afrikaans-speaking children with SLI should not demonstrate any
problems in this regard. No task specifically assessed grammatical
gender; therefore, it is not possible to state whether or not this
hypothesis was supported.
The third prediction concerned the grammatical expression of person
and case: Afrikaans-speaking children with and those without SLI should
at times use the incorrect form of the pronoun. This prediction was not
fully borne out by the Afrikaans data. The typically developing 6-yearolds
fared better than those with SLI and better than the 4-year-olds in
terms of both elicited and spontaneous production of pronouns. Certain
errors of case (on both pronouns and se-constructions) were made by the
6-year-olds with SLI but not by those without SLI.
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