Evaluation du lexique et de la flexion verbale dans le trouble primaire du langage

Abstract

Recent studies have highlighted that verb argument structure (intransitive, transitive and ditransitive verbs) should be taken into account in Specific Language Impairment (SLI) assessment. In the current study, 26 French-speaking children from Quebec (10 typically developing children and 16 children with SLI, 5 to 10 years old) have been tested in French on a multilingual software designed for assessing lexical and morphosyntactic processing of different verb types, in production and comprehension. Results show that in French-speaking children with SLI, ditransitive verbs increase sentence production difficulties, but not action naming. In addition, verb inflectional errors are observed in both production and comprehension. These results support the hypothesis of morphosyntactic impairment, not lexical impairment, of verb processing in children with SLI, affecting both expressive and receptive abilities. This study emphasizes the need to take into account verb argument structure properties in SLI assessment. Finally, this work stresses the value of multilingual tools in the study of language disorders from a cross-language perspective.