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A Study On Nonword Repetition And Sentence Repetition In Mandarin-speaking SLI Children

Posted on:2016-09-21Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:X P LongFull Text:PDF
GTID:2295330479982449Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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A good wealth of studies has reported that nonword repetition(henceforth NWR) and sentence repetition(henceforth SR) can serve as clinical markers for specific language impairment(SLI) to help diagnose this language disorder with good accuracy and utility. To be specific, foreign studies have shown that SLI children have difficulties repeating sentences and non-sense words, in particular sentences involving syntactic movement and nonwords(henceforth NWs) of low wordlikeness and long length, indicating that SLI children may be limited in language ability and phonological short-term memory or phonological sensitivity.Nevertheless, studies on Cantonese-speaking SLI children report that SR instead of NWR turns out to be a desirable clinical marker, suggesting that NWR performance is sensitive to the prosodic structure of the ambient language. As studies on this topic are not available in mainland China yet, the present study undertakes to explore whether NWR and SR are favorable clinical markers for Mandarin-speaking SLI children. A prediction has been made on the research outcome. Specifically, given that Mandarin and Cantonese share a common origin, the previous studies prompt me to predict that similar to the case in Cantonese, SR rather than NWR is an effective marker in the case of Mandarin.To test the clinical utility of NWR and SR, an experiment is conducted on 36 preschool children equally divided into three groups, namely, a SLI group selected by a series of standardized tests, a typically developing age-matched group(henceforth TDA), and a typically developing younger(TDY) group. The experiment materials comprise 27 NWs and 18 sentences and the NWR and SR data are analyzed in SPSS 17.0.The results show that for NWR, SLI children perform worse than their TDA and TDY controls, in particular on long NWs and OUT NWs. Besides, all the three groups demonstrate a length effect and a wordlikeness effect. For SR, all the threegroups show a complexity effect, with the highest score in zai-sentences, the second in le-sentences, and the lowest in bei-sentences. Besides, SLI children perform significantly more poorly than the TDA peers in le-sentences and bei-sentences.Even though the TDA group performs better than the TDY group, which, in turn,performs better than the SLI group, the difference does not reach significant level.Further calculation of those diagnostic indices reveals that both NWR and SR are desirable clinical demonstrators of SLI in Mandarin-speaking children, proving that the previous prediction does not hold water.To provide a plausible analysis of the current research outcome, I propose that SLI children may be limited in language ability, in phonological short-term memory,as well as in phonological sensitivity and phonological representation. Based on this proposal, I attempt to provide a tentative explanation for the research outcome. For NWR, SLI children fail to perform equally well as their TDA and TDY controls, in particular on long NWs and OUT NWs, because their limited phonological short-term memory capacity fails them to store long information sequences and thus contribute to quick decay, and because SLI children are not sensitive to phonological units to form specified representation of the phonological information, thus leading to their poorer performance. For SR, SLI children perform non-significantly worse than the TDY controls, but markedly worse than the TDA peers, especially on complex structures, because SLI children are impaired both in language ability and in phonological short-term memory/phonological representation, and thus have substantial difficulty repeating sentences in particular those involving syntactic movement such as the bei-construction here. Furthermore, as young children especially SLI children tend to treat passive v P as a strong phase, they do not license internal movement out of the passive v P, hence the greater difficulty producing long passives.Theoretically, the present study sheds light on how children manifest themselves when repeating NWs and sentences, why SLI children are limited inNWR and SR, and how they perform when acquiring different sentence structures,such as the zai-, le-, bei-constructions. From the clinical perspective, NWR and SR turn out promising to be applied into the diagnosis of children as language impairment or not. In this regard, SLI children may get more access to early intervention and treatment.
Keywords/Search Tags:nonword repetition, sentence repetition, specific language impairment, clinical marker
PDF Full Text Request
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