The Effect Of Chinese Specific Language Impairment On The Grammatical Body Of Children's Lexical Body

The current study is aimed to explore whether the procession of grammatical aspect in Mandarin children specific language impairment (referred to as SLI) is effected by lexical aspect. By controlling the present time of lexical aspect, we further investigate the time course and the mode of processing of grammatical aspect, then give reasonable explanation.We selected sixteen SLI children based on the standardized language tests and the IQ test, sixteen younger typically developing children matched by language competence (LC) and sixteen typically developing children matched by chronological age (CA) were selected. All of the children completed two self paced reading tasks which are designed to investigate the respond times of perfective aspect "le" and imperfective aspect "zhe" in different verb types-a verb and activity verb.The result of the simple self paced reading task shows that lexical aspects have a great influence on grammatical aspect in Chinese SLI children. For accomplishment verbs, perfective aspects process faster than imperfective aspect; for activity verbs,imperfective aspect processing faster than perfective aspect.This result can be explained by prototype category theory, on the one hand, the semantic features of[+dynamic][+durative] and [-telic] which the activity verbs contained have a strong relationship of imperfective aspect; on the other hand, the the semantic features of[+telic] which the accomplishment verbs have a strong relationship of perfective aspect. It will speed the reaction times when the similar features matched. Chinese SLI children's development follows the prediction of aspect hypothesis. This suggests that the use of grammatical markers in children with SLI is not proficient.When we control the present time of lexical aspects, the results show that the present time of lexical aspects have a great impact on the procession of grammatical aspects. The longer the lexical aspect present time is, the more complete the processing level of the semantic information is, the faster the reaction rate is. The reaction time of the grammatical aspects "zhe" and "le" are changed with the present time of lexical aspect. The pattern of the change in imperfective aspect markers "zhe"is that: 250ms>300ms?350ms. The pattern of the change in perfective aspect markers"1e" is that: 250ms?300ms?350ms. When lexical aspects present 250ms,the reaction time of imperfective aspect "zhe" is slower than perfective aspect "le". When lexical aspects present 300ms and 350ms,both the reaction time of imperfective aspect "zhe",is faster than perfective aspect "le". The results show that there are differences in the time course and the processing strategy of SLI children and typical developing children. On the one hand, because the SLI children have defects in semantics domain,they can't understand the double semantics of activity verbs. Even if the present time of lexical aspects increased,the reactions time of the perfective aspect "le" still very slow; on the other hand, SLI children and typical developing children may activate the semantics features of verbs in different order. SLI children first activate verb semantic features of durative and dynamic. When lexical aspects present 250ms, SLI children can't activate the full semantic features due to the short present time. As the lexical present time is getting longer and longer, they can quickly establish the semantic association between the imperfective aspects and the activity verbs, which makes the reaction time of the imperfective aspect "zhe" is significantly faster than perfective aspect "le".To sum up, the procession of grammatical aspect in Chinese SLI children is deeply influenced by lexical aspects, what's more,SLI children and typical developing children have different processing modes and processing strategies.