| Abstract: | Although the morphological difficulties of children with specific language impairment (SLI) have been documented extensively, performance on complex syntax production has been explored to a far lesser degree. Leonard's (1995) functional categories account of SLI suggests that syntactic structures involving the embedding of complementizer phrases may be problematic for SLI children. In a follow up to Schuele (1995) and Schuele and Nicholls (2000), this study explored the inclusion of obligatory relative markers in subject relative clauses by children with SLI (5 to 7 years) as compared to children with typical language (3 to 5 years). Children with SLI omitted the obligatory relativizer that or WH relative pronoun in 63% of the attempted subject relative clauses. In contrast, TL children always included the obligatory relative marker. Thus, children with SLI demonstrated particular difficulty in the production of subject relative clauses, complex syntactic structures which require an overt element in an embedded complementizer phrase. |
