Pragmatic and Grammatical Properties of Subjects in Children with Specific Language Impairment

This study reports the results of an investigation of subject properties in the spontaneous speech of 14 4-year old English speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and two control groups (age and MLUm). It is shown that while the children with SLI perform much below their age-level with respect to grammatical properties of subjects (subject-verb agreement, subject case), they behave adultlike on pragmatic properties of English subjects (subject-drop). This finding provides support for (i) the hypothesis that grammar and pragmatics are two independent language components, each of which develops at its own pace, and (ii) the hypothesis that children with SLI are impaired in their grammar, but not in their (non-linguistic and interface) pragmatics.