Grammatical morphology and the lexicon in children with specific language impairment

We examined the use of grammatical morphology by preschool-age English-spea king children with specific language impairment (SLI) as a function of thei r lexical diversity Relative to a group of normally developing (ND) prescho olers, these children's use of finite-verb morphology lagged behind expecta tions based on the number of different verbs they used. Noun-related morpho logy fell below expectations based on overall lexical diversity. Difference s between the ND children and children with SLI were also seen For the slop e of the increases in finite-verb morphology as a function of lexical diver sity, with shallower slopes in the SLI data. The Findings of this study add to existing evidence suggesting that a measure of finite grammatical-morph ology use has promise as a clinical marker of SLI in English.