Verb and noun morphology in the spoken and written language of children with language learning disabilities

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of verb and noun morph ology in school-age children's spoken and written language. Sixty children, with and without language learning disabilities (LLD), each produced 2 spo ken and 2 written language samples. The children's accuracy in using morphe mes that mark verb finiteness (regular past tense, 3rd person singular pres ent tense, copula, and auxiliary BE) was compared with their accuracy in us ing noun morphology (regular plural, possessive, articles). As would be exp ected, the typically achieving children, who were aged 7 to 12 years, had m astered the verb and noun morphology in spoken and written samples. The chi ldren with LLD, aged 10 to 12 years, also showed high accuracy in the spoke n samples. On the other hand, they showed substantial difficulty in the wri tten samples with the regular past tense, with errors in 26% of obligatory contexts. However, the children with LLD also had difficulty with the regul ar plural, with errors in 12% of obligatory contexts. For both the regular past tense and plural, all errors were errors of omission. These results in dicate that finiteness marking remains an area of relative difficulty but p erhaps not the only grammatical difficulty For children with language impai rments in the school years.