THE USE OF SUBJECT ARGUMENTS BY CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT

The spontaneous utterances of children with specific language impairme nt (SLI) were examined for their argument structure. The verbs used by the children were categorized into four types based upon the number a nd placement of their obligatory arguments. The categories consisted o f unergative intransitives, unaccusative intransitives, transitives, a nd ditransitives. The results of the study revealed that children with SLI omitted subject arguments more frequently than their younger MLU- matched peers. Such omissions were most likely in sentences with unacc usative intransitives. These findings raise the possibility that child ren with SLI have difficulty with the movement required to achieve the surface representation of unaccusative verb constructions.