A Study On The Complex Syntactic Structure Of Chinese Children With Specific Language Damage

The aim of this study is to investigate whether Chinese specific language impairment children (SLI) possess an impairment in complex syntax competence,& analyze the underlying reasons.This study selected 16 SLI children based on the standardized language tests and the IQ test. 16 typically developing children matched by chronological age(CA) and 16 younger typically developing children matched by language competence(LC) were selected. All these children were tested in four experiments, referred to as non-word repetition, listening recall, picture pointing and picture description.With these experiments, we investigated the participants’phonological working memory, functional working memory, competence of comprehension and expression of the complex syntax.The results of these experiments are as follows:Firstly, both in the non-word repetition task and the listening recall task, Chinese SLI children showed significantly worse manifestations than CA children, but behaved similarly with the LC children, showing they possess an impairment in both the phonological working memory and the functional working memory.Secondly, in the picture pointing task, SLI children’s performances in the comprehension of relative clauses were inferior to CA children, but were similar to the LC children, showing they possess an impairment in the comprehension of complex syntax. After analyzing the impact of sentence length on the comprehension of the relative clauses, and the relevant between working memory and the comprehension of relative clauses, this study shows that the phonological working memory has no effects on the SLI children’s comprehension of the relative clauses, but their impairment in the comprehension may has something with the functional working memory, this is mainly reflected in effecting the relative clauses which are embedded in the object positions. Through analyzing the error patterns, this study shows that the errors are mainly two types: thematic role assignment error in the relative clause and the main clause error. The errors are related to their syntactic construction knowledge, exactly, the former is representational deficit for dependent relations with syntactic movement, and the later may has some relation with the functional working memory.Thirdly, in the picture description task, SLI children’s performances in the production of relative clauses were inferior to both the CA children and the LC children, showing they also possess an impairment in the production of complex syntax. The SLI children produced much more’sentence substitution’ errors than the CA children, but the number of such type of error in their production is similar to the LC children; the SLI children produced much more ’wrong sentence’ errors than both the CA children and the LC children, mainly comprising of the sentences with the gap being filled; all the three groups have no significant difference in the ’thematic role assignment’ error and the SLI children. Thus, the impairments in the production mainly manifest in the ’sentence substitution’ error which is related with their impaired complex syntax knowledge and their non-proficient relative clause knowledge and in the ’wrong sentence’ error, which is related with deficit for dependent relations with syntactic movement.In summary, we hold that Chinese specific language impaired children have deficit in the complex syntax competence, and the underlying reason of such deficit is representational deficit for dependent relations with syntactic movement, having nothing with the phonological working memory. Thus our study support the ’domain-specific’ theory.