The effects of a morphosyntactic deficit in the determiner system: The case of a Greek SLI child

This paper presents a case-study of Greek SLI and has the following aims: ( i) to present and analyse SLI data concentrating on the use of D-elements i n the child's grammatical system: the definite article, object clitics and the wh-phrase what; (ii) to show that there is a clear correlation in the e rrors involving the morphemes in question and that this is due to a deficit in the determiner system which, in adult form, represents the above morphe mes in terms of the same functional category D; (iii) to provide further ev idence for the delay in L1 development of object clitics (or agreement) rel ative to subject agreement (or clitics) showing that a similar pattern is a ttested in the case of this SLI child. Finally, the analysis presented appe ars to favour an account of SLI whereby the deficit evidenced by the use of grammatical categories is indeed a grammatical, rather than a processing, deficit and is restricted to the domain of functional categories. The diffe rential success in this child's use of some functional categories (e,g. sub ject agreement vs. the determiner system) points to the suggestion that SLI involves aspects of the normal route of L1A but also severe delays compare d to normal L1A, The question whether the attested delay indicates a select ive deficit in the processing strategies and learning mechanisms implemente d in SLI cases cannot be unreservedly concluded on the basis of the data fr om this study only. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B,V, All rights reserved.