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Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans patterns regarding the grammatical features number, person, case, and tense are discussed separately. The purpose of this discussion is to establish exactly what it is that a theoretical account of SLI has to account for, i.e., how SLI presents itself in Afrikaans in terms of problems with these four features. Then, in section 9.6.3, an attempt is made at offering an explanation for these errors in term of the devices of Minimalist syntax. The utterances with ungrammatical word order produced by the Afrikaans-speaking children with SLI are re-examined in section 9.6.4. In section 9.6.5, we consider whether the problems regarding the morphological expression of grammatical features and those pertaining to word order are explainable as two types of manifestation of one underlying problem in the grammar of Afrikaansspeaking children with SLI. 9.6.2. Another look at the errors pertaining to grammatical features In terms of the comprehension of the grammatical feature number, there were differences between the three groups of children, but no clear pattern could be detected in these differences (except that the typically developing 6-year-old group fared well and the other two groups almost equally poorly). An account of SLI as it presents itself in Afrikaans does not have to explain these differences, given the small number of items involved and the fact that the children with SLI and the 4-year-olds performed similarly to a great extent. The comprehension of number by the children with SLI could therefore be merely delayed, but probably not deviant. In terms of the elicited production of plural forms of both real and nonsense words, it appeared that the children with SLI presented with a delay: There were differences between the SLI and typically developing 4-year-old groups on certain items, but, in general, the children with SLI and the typically developing 4-year-old group omitted the plural morpheme a similar number of times, and also replaced the targeted plural morpheme with another one a similar number of times. The same cannot be said for the spontaneous production of plural forms: Here, only the children with SLI omitted the plural marker (but in total only twice), and they replaced one plural morpheme with another 274
Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans far more frequently than did either of the two typically developing groups. Mostly irregular plural forms were replaced by regular ones. This pattern cannot be seen as one of delay; rather, the use of plural forms by the Afrikaans-speaking children with SLI appears to deviate from the norm. An account of SLI in Afrikaans needs to explain this deviation. Turning to the grammatical feature case: On the elicited production of pronouns, the children with SLI made more errors than did either of the two groups of typically developing children, with the 4-year-olds faring worse than the 6-year-olds. In spontaneous production of pronouns, the same pattern was seen: The children with SLI fared the worst and the typically developing 6-year-olds the best in terms of correct realisation of pronoun case. The majority of the errors involved substituting possessive sy (‘his’) with hom (‘him’). The errors made by the children with SLI on se-constructions were so few that one should not have to account for them. However, the fact that the children with SLI are more delayed than even the 4-year-olds in terms of correctly realising pronoun case needs to be accounted for. The proportion of errors related to person in the elicited language of the children with SLI was approximately double that of the 4-year-olds. This needs to be accounted for. In terms of spontaneous production of person on pronouns, almost no errors occurred. Regarding the elicited production of past tense forms, the SLI and typically developing 4-year-old groups performed similarly in terms of grammatical past tense constructions (whether it was the targeted construction or another one which was produced); the typically developing 6-year-old group performed better than the other two. There was no difference in the frequency of use of the historic present tense form by the three groups. The only notable difference between the groups was that the SLI group made more idiosyncratic errors than the other two; there was no significant difference in the number of other errors between the three groups. In terms of spontaneous production of past tense forms, the children with SLI fared worse than the other two groups in terms of correct production of het ge- forms. Mostly, the errors involved the omission of the temporal het, but the past participle was also omitted at times (and at other times only the ge- of the past participle was omitted). Interestingly, the children with SLI fared similarly to the 275
Page 1 and 2: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans Chapte
Page 3 and 4: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans tense
Page 5 and 6: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans Minima
Page 7 and 8: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans (159a)
Page 9 and 10: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans (160)
Page 11 and 12: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans what t
Page 13 and 14: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans (167),
Page 17 and 18: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans The bo
Page 19 and 20: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans Recall
Page 23 and 24: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans there
Page 27 and 28: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans The fo
Page 29: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans 9.5. S
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Page 35 and 36: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans A simi
Page 37 and 38: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans Afrika
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Page 41 and 42: Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans In con
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