The role of syllable structure: the case of Russian-speaking children with SLI

This study examines the role of syllable structure in Russian-speaking children, both Typically Developing (TD) and with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). We report results of a pseudo-word repetition task in which syllable number and syllable complexity are manipulated. The results show that children with SLI 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. The study demonstrates that both phonological memory and syllable structure play a role in determining children’s ability to remember pseudo-words.