BOUND-MORPHEME SKILLS IN THE ORAL LANGUAGE OF SCHOOL-AGE, LANGUAGE-IMPAIRED CHILDREN

Bound-morpheme skills of school-age, language-impaired (LI) children w ere explored with three tasks designed to assess multiple dimensions o f this component of language. Ten English-speaking, school-age LI chil dren (Mean age: 10:3) and ten children with normal language (Mean age: 9:9) served as subjects. A two-way analysis of variance revealed sign ificant group differences. Fisher a priori testing documented signific ant group differences for a measure of English bound-morpheme skill le vels, a measure of ability to generalize English bound-morphemes to no vel words, and a measure of ability to learn novel bound-morphemes att ached to novel words. The findings indicate that core features of deve lopmental language impairment in preschool children-poor ability to le arn, to use, and to generalize bound-morphemes-are also present in sch ool-age, LI children.