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Wh-questions in Swedish children with SLI

Hansson, Kristina LU orcid and Nettelbladt, Ulrika LU (2006) In International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 8(4). p.376-383
Abstract
This is an exploratory study of the use of wh-questions in Swedish children with typical and impaired language development. Swedish is a verb-second (V2) language where inverted word order is not unique to wh-questions, but occurs in all utterances that begin with a constituent other than the subject. The purpose was to investigate types and frequency patterns in the use of wh-questions, wh-word and verb combinations, and simplifications. Analysis of spontaneous data from 14 Swedish children with SLI, 14 age-matched and 14 MLU-matched controls showed that the children with SLI used the same types of wh-questions and wh-word and verb combinations with similar frequencies as the controls. The most frequent simplification in all groups was... (More)
This is an exploratory study of the use of wh-questions in Swedish children with typical and impaired language development. Swedish is a verb-second (V2) language where inverted word order is not unique to wh-questions, but occurs in all utterances that begin with a constituent other than the subject. The purpose was to investigate types and frequency patterns in the use of wh-questions, wh-word and verb combinations, and simplifications. Analysis of spontaneous data from 14 Swedish children with SLI, 14 age-matched and 14 MLU-matched controls showed that the children with SLI used the same types of wh-questions and wh-word and verb combinations with similar frequencies as the controls. The most frequent simplification in all groups was omission of the wh-word. The children with SLI tended to make more non-target productions in general than the control groups, but differed significantly in most respects only from the age controls. Non-inversion was found only in the data from the children with SLI, but was less frequent in wh-questions than in non-subject initial declaratives from the same children. Due to a large inter-individual variation conclusions are hard to draw. However, the results clearly show that wh-questions are a structure which is interesting to study cross-linguistically. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Wh-questions, specific language impairment, cross-linguistic, SLI, word order, Swedish
in
International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology
volume
8
issue
4
pages
376 - 383
publisher
Taylor & Francis
external identifiers
  • scopus:80052600393
ISSN
1754-9515
DOI
10.1080/14417040600880722
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
d6d1318a-158e-47d8-9571-2c3831434a95 (old id 1136255)
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 12:27:13
date last changed
2022-01-27 03:55:12
@article{d6d1318a-158e-47d8-9571-2c3831434a95,
  abstract     = {{This is an exploratory study of the use of wh-questions in Swedish children with typical and impaired language development. Swedish is a verb-second (V2) language where inverted word order is not unique to wh-questions, but occurs in all utterances that begin with a constituent other than the subject. The purpose was to investigate types and frequency patterns in the use of wh-questions, wh-word and verb combinations, and simplifications. Analysis of spontaneous data from 14 Swedish children with SLI, 14 age-matched and 14 MLU-matched controls showed that the children with SLI used the same types of wh-questions and wh-word and verb combinations with similar frequencies as the controls. The most frequent simplification in all groups was omission of the wh-word. The children with SLI tended to make more non-target productions in general than the control groups, but differed significantly in most respects only from the age controls. Non-inversion was found only in the data from the children with SLI, but was less frequent in wh-questions than in non-subject initial declaratives from the same children. Due to a large inter-individual variation conclusions are hard to draw. However, the results clearly show that wh-questions are a structure which is interesting to study cross-linguistically.}},
  author       = {{Hansson, Kristina and Nettelbladt, Ulrika}},
  issn         = {{1754-9515}},
  keywords     = {{Wh-questions; specific language impairment; cross-linguistic; SLI; word order; Swedish}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{4}},
  pages        = {{376--383}},
  publisher    = {{Taylor & Francis}},
  series       = {{International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology}},
  title        = {{Wh-questions in Swedish children with SLI}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14417040600880722}},
  doi          = {{10.1080/14417040600880722}},
  volume       = {{8}},
  year         = {{2006}},
}