Running head: ACQUISITION OF SYLLABLE STRUCTURE The acquisition of syllable structure by Russian-speaking children with SLI

The purpose of this study is to address the acquisition of syllable structure by Russianspeaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). We report results of a pseudo-word repetition task in which syllable number and syllable complexity are manipulated. This study employed a non-equivalent groups design in which nineteen participants were classified into an SLI impaired group (6) and a Typically Developing (TD) non-impaired group (13) based on three measures of general language competence. All subjects participated in an experiment involving repetition of 144 pseudo-words which varied in syllable structure, number, and stress (resulting in 36 unique cells per subject). The results show that SLI children perform significantly worse than TD children on this task, indicating that Russian follows the general pattern in this respect. However, the factors affecting the difficulty of the task are the same for both groups, contrary to previous claims in the literature. We also discuss such factors as onset and coda complexity and sonority.