Logopedics, Vol. 14 No. 1, 2024.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.31299/log.14.1.5
Production of pronominal clitics in typically developing children and children with DLD
Eva Pavlinušić Vilus
; Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Edukacijsko-rehabilitacijski fakultet, Odsjek za logopediju, Borongajska cesta 83f, 10000 Zagreb
Abstract
The omission of the third-person object clitics is considered to be a clinical marker of developmental language disorder (DLD) in children of pre-school and school age in a number of languages. The production of object clitics is also a challenge for typically developing children (TD) in the first years of language acquisition, and it was most thoroughly explored in Romance languages. In the Croatian language the production of pronominal clitics in children with DLD has not been investigated. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by reviewing research conducted in other languages that is relevant to the Croatian linguistic context, and thus to examine whether the deviation from the typical production of pronominal clitics could be a clinical marker of DLD in the Croatian language. The review showed that difficulties in the production of third-person clitics are present in TD children up to the age of five, while children with DLD also show difficulties in adolescence. After the fifth year of life, TD children sometimes err in morphological marking of clitics, in which the working memory span plays an important role. The latter has proved to be a predictor of the production of pronominal clitics in children with DLD as well. Various factors related to language processing mechanisms and/or general
cognitive abilities have been proposed as the causes of deviation from typical production of pronominal clitics in children with DLD. The review of the research confirmed that difficulties in the production of clitics could be among clinical markers of DLD in Croatian. However, it is necessary to examine the production of clitics in children with DLD in Croatian for final confirmation.
Keywords
developmental language disorder (DLD); acquisition of pronouns; pronominal clitics; clitic omission; morphosyntactic development
Hrčak ID:
321050
URI
Publication date:
30.9.2024.
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