LF-interpretability and language development: A study of verbal and nominal features in Greek normally developing and SLI children

This paper includes (i) a comparison of the developmental pattern of certai n morphosyntactic features in normally developing (ND) Greek children with similar data from a group of children with specific language impairment and (ii) a new analysis of the differences found. The analysis is based on a m inimalist notion of LF interpretability. Depending on the feature-specifica tion of lexical items (i.e., [+/- interpretable] at LF), a different route of development follows. In addition, phonological salience of both interpre table and noninterpretable features is argued to play an important role in an account of crosslinguistic differences in both normal and exceptional de velopment. (C) 2001 Academic Press