The French noun phrase in preschool children with SLI: morphosyntactic and error analyses*

We studied spontaneous speech noun-phrase production in eight French-speaking children with SLI (aged 5 ; 0 to 5 ; 11) and controls matched on age (4 ; 10 to 5 ; 11) or MLU (aged 3 ; 2 to 4 ; 1). Results showed that children with SLI prefer simple DP structures to complex ones while producing more substitution and omission errors than controls. The three groups also showed distinct error patterns. Children with SLI appeared to have difficulty with phonological processes involved in liaison, elision, and contraction, whereas control children tended to make more lexical errors. These data support models of reduced morphosyntactic and syntactic abilities in this population, and suggest that morphophonological processes should also be integrated into descriptive models of SLI.