Acquisition Of Passive Structures In Mandarin-speaking Children With Specific Language Impairment

T his thesis studies the acquisition of passive structures by Mandarin-speaking children withS pecific Language I mpair ment (hereinafter referred to as SLI). Bycomparing with English-speakingchildren with S LI, the present study tries to explain their similarities and differences on the basis o fArgument Chain Deficit Hypothesis (ACDH)(Borer&Wexler,1987,1992) and UniversalPhaseRequir ement (UPR)(Wexler,2004,2007).Both the controlled experiments and naturalistic data are adopted in the study, to investigate theproduction andcomprehension of passive structures by12children with SLI,12Typically-DevelopingAge Matched Children (TDA), and12Typically-Developing YoungerChildren (TDY) in Changsha,Guangzhou, Hefei, and Xinxiang. T he present study mainly explores the acquisition of passivest ructures by children with SLI fr om the following four aspects: first, to investigate bothcomprehension and production o f passives by Mandarin-speaking children with SLI and typicallydeveloping children; second, to investigate the mastery of agents and patients in passives byMandarin-speaking children with SLI and typically developing children; third, to explore whetherMandarin-speaking children with SLI exhibit similar impairment patterns in passives as that o fE nglish-speaking children with SLI; last, to verify whether the acquisition o f passives byMandarin-speaking normal children and children with SLI is in accordance with the prediction of ACDH and UPR.Results of controlled experiments showed that in the production and comprehension o f passiveswith different complement structures, there was significantdifference between Mandarin-speakingchildren with S LI and T DA children, while there was no significant difference in children with SLI andT DY children. I n the imitation o f passive sentences, there was significant difference between childrenwithS LI and typically developing children. Children’s mastery o f agents and patients in passives canbe learned fr om the sentence types they produced. In the production of long passives, TDA childrenuttered the largest number, followed by T DY children, andSLI children produced the least number.About short passives, there was no significantdifference among three groups o f children. These resultswere not completely consistent with the predictions o f ACDH and UPR.Results of naturalistic data showed that the most frequently produced structure by three groups o fchildren was the short passive structure with resultative complement, namely the structure of NP1-BEI-V-RC. Viewed fr om the age o f production, both the long passives and short passivesappeared later in children with SLI than T DA children. Results also indicated some similarities anddifferences between Mandarin-speaking children with SLI and English-speaking children with SLI. Allt he S LI children lagged behind T DA children in acquiring passive structures. English-speakingchildren with S LI tended to analyze short passives as adjectival passives, but Mandarin-speaking children with S LI tended to r eplace short passives with unaccusatives. The implications of the abovefindings to current accounts of SLI were discussed in the end.