Language behavior by mildly handicapped and nonretarded children on complement clauses

Research in Developmental Disabili&s. Vol. 11. pp. 199-216.1990 08914222190 S3.00 + .OO Printed in the USA. All rights reserved. copyright GJ 1990 Pergamon Press plc

Language Behavior by Mildly Handicapped and Nonretarded Children

on Complement Clauses

Dimitris Natsopoulos

University of Thessaloniki

Aphrodite Xeromeritou

University of Patras

Comprehension of complement clauses embedded into four matrix verbs in Greek, equivalent to English in syntactic and semanric constraints. was investi- gated with mildly handicapped (MH) and nonretarded children (NR). The results suggest that: (a) the MH children use tk same syntactic information in comprehension of complement clauses as the NR children, (b) verbal MA cannot best predict linguistic performance by MH and NR children. (c) Digit Span does not correlate with comprehension nor does verbal IQ in MH., (d) Digit Span and verbal IQ are significantly correlated with NR children’s comprehension, (e) tk psychological statu of Ihe minimal distance principle (MDP) is debatable, while tk semantic role principle (SRP) is partially supported by the data, (t) MH children lack metalinguistic ability compared to young NR children.

Investigation of linguistic abilities in MH children has mainly been confined to expressive language (cf. reviews by Bartel, Bryen, & Keehn, 1973; Cromer, 1974/1978; Dodd, 1976; Ryan 1975; Semmel & Dolley, 197 1; Wheldall, 1976).

Comprehension, however, of language in MH children, although reflects

The order of the authors is alphabetical. The constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

Requests for reprints should be sent to: Dimitris Natospoulos. Psychological Laboratory, University of Thessaloniki, 54006, Greece.

199

200 D. Natsopoulos and A. Xeromeritou

research trends in language development with NR children, it has been limited to research of a small number of linguistic phenomena. This may be understandable to certain extent, if one conjectures that MH children form a special population with intrinsic problems of theoretical conceptualization and research methodology (Baumeister, 1984; Detterman, 1987).

Especially, Bartel et al. (1973) showed that acquisition of negative sentences, passive voice, grammatical categories, morphological aspects and formation of the tense and verb system is significantly different in MH and NR children matched on mental age (MA). Comprehension, recall and/or imitation of various types of sentences in MH and NR children matched on MA is important (Blisky-Hickson, Walker & Sakales, 1983; Cromer, 1974/1978; Graham, 1974; Natsopoulos & Xeromeritou, 1988; Semmel & Dolley, 197 1).

Other studies found similar performance by MH and NR children on comprehension and imitation of different transformation types, nominalization, passive voice, if clauses, complement clauses, grading, prepositions, morphology and acquisition of various lexical items (Bartel et al., 1973; Cromer 1974/1978; Duchan and Erickson, 1976; Graham, 1974; Rondal, 1980; Ryan, 1975; Wheldall, 1976).

Likewise, Dewart (1979) demonstrated that MH children of higher MA, matched with NR children, perform equally well on comprehension of active sentences, but significantly worse on passive voice. Further, MH children of higher MA, unlike MH children of lower MA, make use of semantic constraints and word-order as NR children. Use, however, of word-order strategy by MH children even of higher MA leads to very low performance on passive voice.

Findings by Bridges and Smith (1984) with Down’s syndrome children, also matched on MA with NR, support Dewart’s (1979) results on comprehension of active and passive sentences in general. But Bridges and Smith (1984) contend that use of word-order strategy and use of syntax required for comprehension of active and passive voice, respectively, was - mutatis mutandis- a common characteristic of children of both groups. Cromer’s (1974/1978) data suggest a similar line of thought. MH children of lower MA use word-order strategy, as their very young NR counterparts, but MH children of higher MA make use of syntax in interpreting complement clauses of the type “the duck is easy to bite” vs. “the duck is glad to bite.” Moreover, Strohner and Nelson’s (1974) study with NR children aged 2 to 5 supports Bridges and Smith’s (1984) and Cromer’s (1974/1978) data, indicating that younger NR children use word-order strategy in comprehension of active-passive voice, in contrast to older NR children who make use of syntax.

Language Behavior by IUH and NR Children 201

With regard to differences found in linguistic behavior between MH and NR children, some investigators tend to attribute this developmental delay to limited short term memory span in the MH children in general (Cromer, 1974/1978). More specifically, Graham (1974) argues that older MH children’s comprehension of sentences is slightly lower than that of nursery school children, because of information loss about discrete lexical items in the short term memory of the MH children. This is true since MH children compared to NR are less efficient in maintaining transformational (syntactic) and semantic markers associated with the base string of each particular sentence type.

Some researchers, however, such as Dewart (1979) found no relationship between memory span and sentence comprehension in MH children. Others have argued that processes underlying sentence comprehension and/or imitation are fundamentally the same (Bridges & Smith, 1984) or similar (Bilsky-Hickson et al., 1983; Natsopoulos and Xeromeritou, 1988; Scholes and Klepper, 1982) in MH and NR children.

The objective of the present study is twofold: First, the study aims to investigate whether MH children matched on MA with NR children are more keen on using word-order strategies than syntax in sentence comprehension. To obtain clear results MI-I and NR children slightly older than MA six were recruited. Second, the research aims to reassess the relationship between language comprehension and short term memory span in MH and NR, because this issue is still an open question, according to the data reported.

To study use of word-order strategies versus use of syntax by MH and NR children, a particular type of complement clauses was selected, because they lend themselves to a rigorous test of the two notions. These complement clauses are embedded into four matrix verbs and form the following construction types:

1. John asked Mary what fruit to buy.

2. John promised Mary to do the homework.

3. John asked Mary to study more.

4. John told Mary what shoes to wear.

According to developmental data with NR children (Chomsky, 1969, 1972, 1982), constructions 3 and 4 are the easiest; construction 2 is more difficult and construction 1 the most difficult of all. In transformational terms, the difficulty in comprehension of these constructions stems from the fact that the grammatical subject of the complement clause is missing from the surface structure. That is, Mary, the second noun phrase (NP2) in constructions 3 and 4, which is the indirect object of the main clause verb

202 D. Natsgpoulos and A. Xeromeritou

(asked/told), is also the subject of the complement clause very (to study/to wear). This is the minimal distance principle (MDP) to which constructions 3 and 4 conform. In contrast, constructions 1 and 2 are an exception to MDP. John, the fust noun phrase (NPl) which is the furthest noun phrase to the complement clause verb in terms of surface distance is the subject of both the main (asked/promised) and complement clause verb (buy/study). Before NR children learn which construction types comply with the MDP and which do not they tend to overgeneralize application of the MDP from constructions 3 and 4 to constructions 1 and 2 (Goldman, 1976; Gowie & Powers, 1979; Kessel, 1970; Kramer, Koff, & Luria, 1972).

Other studies have criticized MDP as an interpretive device on semantic (Lederberg & Maratsos, 1981; Maratsos, 1974) and/or pragmatic grounds (Natsopoulos and Xeromeritou, in press; Tanz, 1983; Warden, 198 1, 1986).

In particular, Lederberg and Maratsos (1981) and Maratsos (1974) showed that children’s linguistic behavior is guided by a semantic role principle (SRP) than by the concept of the MDP. That is, the children were correct on passive voice (i.e., John was told/asked by Mary to leave), but they failed construction of type 2 (i.e., John promised Mary to leave), although both constructions comply with the MDP

To investigate the effect of short term memory on sentence comprehension by MH and NR children, short term memory was measured by Digit Span because it correlates significantly with NR children’s verbal ability (Wechsler, 1974, Table 14, p. 36).

On the basis of developmental data with NR children and findings with MH children, the following hypotheses were tested:

1. If MH children rely on use of word-order strategy as Dewart (1979) claims, performance on constructions 1 to 4 would be different compared to that by NR children, in general. More specifically, (a) performance on constructions 1 and 2 by MH children would be higher than performance on constructions 3 and 4, because constructions 1 and 2 favor word-order strategy compared to constructions 3 and 4 which conflict with such a strategy. Informal parsing would, however, suggest whether MH children’s comprehension is guided by a word-order perceptual device or by process of syntax. (b) performance on constructions 1 to 4 by MH and NR would be similar according to Bridges and Smith (1984) and Cromer (1974/1978), because older MH and NR children (Strohner & Nelson, 1974) matched on MA make use of syntax and use of word-order strategy. As with (a), informal parsing would also indicate whether the former or the latter process affects children’s linguistic behavior,. (c) it is further implied that use of syntax would-ceteris paribus-elicit similar performance on constructions 1 and 2 vs. 3 and 4 by both MH and NR children.

Language Behavior by MH and NR Children 203

2. Alternatively, higher performance on constructions 3 and 4 by either group of children would suggest (a) greater psychological effect linked with the MDP (Chomsky, 1969, 1972, 1982) than with SRP (Lederberg & Maratsos, 1981; Maratsos, 1974); (b) similar performance on constructions 1 to 4 would favor SRP over MDP as accounting device for language comprehension in both groups.

3. If linguistic performance can be attributed to limited short term memory of MI-I children compared to NR, Digit Span (Wechsler, 1974) would indicate the strength of correlation between the two variables. Digit Span may also, in combination with verbal MA and IQ as covariates in regression analysis (R2change), account for differential contribution to linguistic performance by MI-l and NY children, respectively.

METHOD

Subjects

Two groups of 64 subjects, 32 MH and 32 NR children, were tested. The 32 MH children varied in etiology. Children with brain damage were not included. They came from two schools and a center for MI-l children in the city of Patras in Southern Greece. The 32 MI-I children were selected from a pool of about 100 subjects. MI-l subjects who were lower than 60 months verbal MA were excluded. Eleven of the 32 subjects were live-in students and the remaining 21 were day students. All MH subjects attended the special education program supervised by the Ministry of Education in Greece. The chronological age range was 96 to 197 months (mean chronological age 145.74 months; SD 22.35 months). The mean verbal MA on PPVTl (Dunn, 1965; Form A) was 83.65 months (the SD was 6.19 months; the verbal MA range was 61 to 110 months). The mean PPVT IQ was 66.66 (the SD was 6.07; the PPVT IQ range was 50 to 77). Nineteen of the MH children were females.

The 32 NR children were selected from a pool of about 135 subjects to match the MH children on verbal MA. The chronological age range was 58 to 106 months (mean age 68.63 months: SD 6.22 months). The subjects’ mean verbal MA on PPVT was 83.53 months (SD 6.47 months; the verbal MA age range was 61 to 110 months; the mean PPVT IQ was 110.60; SD 8.77; the PPVT IQ range was 100 to 134). It should be noted

‘The PPVT has not been standardized for the Greek population, but form A was translated into Greek for research purposes by maintaining the word-concept equivalence between the two languages.

204 D . Natsopoulos and A. Xeromeritou

that the NR children’s mean verbal MA on PPVT was somehow higher than their CA, because of a few extreme scores obtained by four precocious children. But the mean verbal IQ was at the mean point of the scale (Dunn, 1965, p. 11). All the subjects came from a private school located in a suburban area of Thessaloniki City in northern Greece. Seventeen subjects were females. Differences in PPVT MA between the two groups were not significant (t(62)=0.70).

All MH and NR children were Caucasians from Greek native speaking families. The existing small dialectical differences between North and South to do not affect comprehension of standard constructions as the selected ones.

Material

The linguistic constructions tested. Sixteen linguistic constructions were selected for testing; four for ask (ask information, four for promise, four for ask (request) and four for tell (give information). Greek, unlike English, has two separate lexical items for ask (ask information) and ask (request): That is, the lexical item rot’o stands for the English ask (ask information) and the lexical item zet’o (request) for the English ask (request). The Greek lexical item l’egho (give information) is equivalent to the English tell (give information) as in construction 4, and the Greek lexical item ip’oshome is equivalent to the English promise.

The formal syntactic types of the Greek linguistic constructions equivalent to English in syntactic and semantic constraints are the following:

1. NPl + rot’o (ask information + NP2 + wh- + na complementizer (equivalent to to) + finite (subjunctive) complement (equivalent to infinitival) clause (i.e., John asked Mary what fruit to buy).

2. NPl + ip’oshome (promise) + NP2 + na complementizer (equivalent to to) + finite (subjunctive) complement (equivalent to infinitival) clause (i.e., John promised Mary to do the homework).

3. NPl + zet’o (ask=request) + NP2 + na complementizer (equivalent to to) + finite (subjunctive) complement (equivalent to infinitival) clause (i.e., John asked Mary to study more).

4. NPl + l’egho (give information) + NP2 + wh- + na complementizer (equivalent to to) + finite (subjunctive) complement (equivalent to infinitival) clause (i.e., John told Mary what shoes to wear).

The difference between English and Greek is that in English the verb of the complement clause in constructions 1 to 4 is in infinitival form,

Lunguuge Behavior by MH ana’ NR Children 205

whereas in Greek the same verb is in finite form (subjunctive). However, in reported speech in Greek, as in English, the finite verb suffix does not mark which preceding NP (i.e., NPl or NP2) is the subject of the complement verb action. This does not mean that constructions 1 to 4 are in Greek, as in English, ambiguous. That is, NPl is the subject of the main and complement clause in constructions 1 and 2. NPl is the subject of the main clause and NP2 is the subject of the complement clause in constructions 3 and 4, respectively. Samples of constructions such as 1 to 4 are also reported in the Procedure section.

Thirty-two 29x21 cm pictures illustrated the events occurring in the 16 constructions. Each construction was illustrated by two pictures presenting two characters each. In one of the two pictures, the complement verb was acted according to adult-like meaning, and in the other picture the subject- agent of the complement verb was reversed. Preference, however, for using pictures over acting-out and vice versa as a diagnostic means in language comprehension tests is still an unresolved methodological problem (see Chomsky, 1969, 1982; Dewart, 1979; Kessel, 1970; Kramer et al., 1972; Natsopoulos & Xeromeritou, 1988; Warden, 198 1, 1986).

PROCEDURE

All MH subjects were tested by the second author, a special educator after the experimental procedure was standardized by the two authors. All the NR subjects were tested by the first author. The subjects of either group were familiar with their experimenters, because they were tested on PPVT before they participated in the main test. Each child was tested individually in a comfortable and quite room. S/he sat beside the experimenter in front of a table, where the pictures were displayed during the test administration. Both constructions and pictures were presented at random, but linguistic constructions of the same type were not allowed to follow consecutively. Half of the subjects received the randomized constructions in the order I to 16 and half of them in the order of 16 to 1. Each linguistic construction was preceded by a neutral conversational context, with regard to NR being the subject-agent of the complement clause. Samples of such context and linguistic constructions illustrated by pictures are the following: “A few days ago, a green-grocery went into business nearby. It sells fresh vegetables, oranges, apples, and bananas” (context preceding construction 1, i.e., John asked Mary what fruit to buy; correct picture shows John buying fruit and control picture shows Mary buying fruit). ‘Children love cats and pets very much. But children should not feed cats too often because they get fat like people and may die” (context preceding construction 2, i.e., Mary promised John to feed the cat


only in the morning and evening: correct picture displays Mary feeding the cat and control picture displays John feeding the cat). “Children very often spend much of their time watching TV and playing with toys, and they do not do their homework” (context preceding construction 3, i.e., John asked Mary to study more; correct picture shows John studying and control picture shows Mary studying).

“John and Mary were invited to a birthday party. They had to get dressed quickly to be in time” (context preceding construction 4, i.e., Mary told John what shoes to wear; correct picture shows Mary trying the shoes on and control picture displays John trying the shoes on).

The administration of the test was as follows: The experimenter laid the two pictures of the construction in hand on the table in front of the child. Then the experimenter instructed the child about the task s/he had to work on: “I am going to tell you some very short stories about these children when you see on pictures as these (the experimenter pointed to the characters portrayed by the pictures). These children, in turn, ask, promise, request and tell one another to do things. After listening to the story, please show me on these pictures who did what the story was about. I will repeat the story as many times as you like.” After the experimenter had administered the context, uttered the test construction and asked the child to repeat, then selected the picture s/he thought that it rendered the adult- like meaning.

To make sure that the child understood the relations expressed in the main and complement clause h/she was asked to parse the construction informally by identifying the subject-agent of the main clause verb (NPl), the indirect object (NP2) of the main clause verb and the subject-agent of the complement clause verb (NPl or NP2, respectively). To tap these relations the following questions were addressed to the child: “Who asked/promised/requested/told ? Whom did s/he ask/promise/request/tell? Who did that.” Further, each child was asked to transform the indirect speech to direct by supplying additional evidence to the parsing. The children were prompted as follows: “If you were John or Mary and had to ask/promise/request/tell John or Mary (the names always varied according to construction tested) what fruit to buy/to promise to feed the cat/to ask (request) to study more, and tell what shoes to wear, how would you ask/promise/request/tell?” The mean word length of the constructions tested was 9.31. All concepts described in the constructions were familiar

*In order to distinguish Greek constructions for ask (ask information), promise, ask (request) and tell (give informalion) from their English equivalents, they will henceforth be referred to as G-ask (ask information) construction 1. G-promise constrcution 2. G-request (ask) construction 3. and G-tell (give information) construction 4, respectively.


to the children. The verb promise was also paraphrased into “give my word” utterance when construction 22 was presented to MH children. The names of the characters (NPl and NP2) were equally distributed in the constructions. The experimental session lasted 25 to 30 minutes for the NR children. The MH children were tested in two sessions. MI-I children more distractible or less cooperative were tested in three sessions. All answers were recorded in special forms for transcription.

Digit Span

The Digit Span (Digits Forward and Digits Backward) from WISC-R (Wechsler, 1974, pp. 102- 103) was administered to MH and NR children in a separate session after the comprehension test had been completed. Presenting the Digit Span in a separate session was thought it made especially the MI-I children’s task less cumbersome.

DESIGN

The design of the study was a 2x4 factorial design. The first factor was a between-group independent variable (MI-I vs. NR subjects) and the second factor was a within-subjects independent variable with repeated measures (four construction types with four instances each).

Scoring

For a child to be credited with comprehension of a particular construction s/he was required to correctly answer three or four (75 to 100%) out of four complement clauses embedded into the same matrix verb (see section on Linguistic Constructions Tested) by selecting the picture s/he thought it illustrated the meaning of the construction in hand, and identifying (parsing) informally the syntactic and semantic relations. If the child failed correct picture selection, s/he was asked to reparse the particular construction. Correct reparsing was considered appreciation of the construction. But frequencies of correct picture selection associated with correct parsing were calculated to determine reliability of the picture technique as a diagnostic means. Further, to assess transformation skill of the MH and NR children, each child was asked to transform the indirect speech to direct. If the child resisted transformation or was not responsive, as was the case with MH children, s/he was credited with lack of such a skill. If the child converted indirect speech to direct maintaining syntax and semantics of the speech act in an adult-like fashion, s/he was credited with transformation skill. As with picture selection, frequencies of adult-


TABLE 1. Number of Subjects, Mean Proportions and SDS of Correct Parsing by Task Type in the

Group of MH and NR ChiMreo

Task Types

1. G-Ask (ask info) 2. G-Promise 3. G-Request (ask) 4. G-Tell (give info) Digit Span

N Mean SD N Mean SD N Mean SD N Mean SD Mean SD MH

17 .53 .49 18 ..56 .49 13 .40 .49 9 .28 .45 1.19 1.02 NR

26 .81 .39 .17 .53 .49 10 .31 .46 7 .22 .41 4.63 4.23

MH: (N=32) N-R: (N=32)

like transformations were calculated for those children who parsed also constructions correctly. Thus, each subject was assigned three different scores: one for comprehension (parsing), one for picture selection and one for transformation of indirect speech to direct. On the basis of this rationale, a score of 1 was given to the subject if s/he comprehended (parsed) three or four (75 to 100%) out of four instances of the same matrix verb according to criteria mentioned. Maximum score for comprehension of the four matrix verbs was 4 per subject. A score of 1 was also given to the subject if s/he selected correctly three or four (75 to 100%) out of four picture instances for the same matrix verb. Maximum score for picture selection on the four matrix verbs was assigned a score of 1. Maximum score for transformation of the four matrix verbs was 4 per subject. In all other cases, a score of 0 was given to the subject for parsing, picture selection and transformation, respectively.

Scoring on Digit Span followed Wechsler’s (1974, pp. 102-103) procedure.

RESULTS

Correct Parsing

Table 1 shows number of subjects, mean proportions and SDS of correct parsing in the group of MH and NR children.

An ANOVA has shown that MH and NR children do not differ significantly in performance on the four construction typs (F(1, 62) < 1). The main construction effect was significant (F(1, 62) = 14.22, p < .OOl).


TABLE 2. Number of Subjects, Mean Roportiottsl and SDS of Correct Picture Selection Combined

with Correct Parsing in the MH and NR Children

Task ‘QWQ 1. G-Ask (ask info) 2. G-Promise 3. G-Request (ask) 4. G-Tell (give info)

N Meall SD N Mean SD N Mean SD N Mean SD

Groups: MH

15 .41 .17 16 .50 .50 12 .38 22 5 .16 .32 NR

24 .75 .61 17 .53 .49 10 .31 .19 6 .19 .33

MH: (N=32) NR: (N=32)

Interaction between construction types and the two groups of subjects was not significant (F( 1, 62) = 1.93). A f-test for correlated means yielded significant difference in assigning NPl as subject in the complement clause on constructions G-ask (information) and G-promice compared to NP2 on constructions G-request and G-tell (give information) both for MH (t(31) = 2.52, p < .02) and NR children (1(31) = 5.20, p < .OOl), two-tailed).

Correct Picture Selection Associated with Correct Parsing

Correct picture selection combined with correct parsing did not differ significantly in the MI-I and NR children (F( 1,62) = 1.97). The main effect of correct parsing combined with correct picture selection was significant (F(1, 62) = 13.65, p c .OOl) across the four construction types. Interaction between the two variables and the two groups was not significant (F(1,62) = 2.64; cf. Table 2).

Transformation of Indirect Speech to Direct

The MH children, although repeatedly prompted to transform indirect speech to direct (i.e., “How did John ask/promise/request/tell Mary . ..?” or “If you were John, how would you ask/promise/request/tell Mary . ..?“) they rendered the target construction in reported speech. The NR children while not particularly versatile, nine of them (28.13%) transformed indirect speech to direct, four on G-ask information; two on G-promise; two on G- request and one on G-tell. Table 3 displays number of subjects who transformed indirect speech to direct in an adult-like fashion.


TABLE 3. Number of Subjects ‘lhnsforming Indirect Speech in

An Adult-like Fashion in the MH and NR Group

Task Types

1. G-Ask (ask info) 2. G-Promise 3. G-Request (ask) 4. G-Tell (give info)

N Mean SD N Mean SD N Mean SD N Mean SD

MH

0 .OO .OO 0 .oo .OO 0 .oo al 0 .OO .Oo

NR

4 .13 .42 2 .Ob .33 2 .c6 .33 1 .03 .24

MH: (N=32) NR: (N=32)

PPVT MA, PPVTIQ, and Digit Span

To assess the importance of PPVT MA, PPVT IQ, and Digit Span factors in language performance by the MH and NR children, the three factors were treated as independent or predictor variables in a step-wise regression analysis, while language performance across the four constructions was used as criterion (dependent) variable. Table 4 presents the multiple R and R2 change.

According to Table 4, PPVT MA and PPVT IQ account for a very low proportion of explained variance in MH children. Interestingly enough, Digit Span does not account for explained variance in MH. PPVT MA is also a very poor predictor of language performance by NR children. In contrast, PPVT IQ and Digit Span account for equally larger proportion of explained variance in NR children.

The Nature of Errors Committed by MH and NR Children

All errors committed by MH children resulted from assignment of wrong subject to the complement clause in the four types of constructions in the form of indirect speech.

In contrast, the errors observed in the NR children in the four construction types fell into the following categories: 75% of the errors in G-ask (ask information) resulted from assigning wrong subject to the complement clause in the form of indirect speech and 25% of them were


TABLE 4. Summary of Step-wise Regression (Multiple R and R2change)of PPVT MA, PPVT IQ and

Digit Span on Language Performance by the MH and NR Children

Group:

MH

PPVT MA PPVT IQ Digit Span

Multiple R R*change Multiple R R*change Muliple R R*change

Lawwe .12 .02 .14 .02 .02 .OO

Performance

Group:

NR

PPVT MA PPVT IQ Digit Span

Multiple R R*change MultipIeR R*change Multiple R R*change

Language .14 .02 .36* .I3 .36* .13

Performance

*p-C.05

due to the ask (request) meaning (i.e., Mary, buy fruit) and to ask (ask information) meaning (i.e., Mary, what fruit should you buy?), instead of “Mary, what fruit should I buy?“; 76.92% of the errors in construction 2 (G-promise) stemmed from wrong parsing in the form of indirect speech and 23.08% of them in the form of direct speech associated with tell (order/command) meaning (i.e., John, feed the cat); 75% of the errors were due to wrong parsing of construction 3 (G-request); 25% of them resulted from direct speech associated with say meaning in modal form (i.e., I will study more), instead of request/order meaning (i.e., Mary, (please) study more); 70% of the errors in construction 4 (G-tell=give information) came from assigning wrong subject (NPl) to complement clause in direct speech; 18% of the errors wee also due to wrong parsing and, subsequently, wrong transformation of indirect to direct speech (i.e., I will wear these


shoes); 12% of the errors stemmed from assigning wrong (NPl) or correct (NP2) subject to the complement clause in the form of question (i.e., what shoes should I or should you wear?), instead of giving information (i.e., Mary, you should wear these shoes) and/or ordering/commanding.

DISCUSSION

The main findings of this study conflict with Dewart’s (1979) claims (cf. hypothesis 1) that MH children rely on use of word-order than on use of syntax in comprehension of sentences. Indeed, the data demonstrate that the course of understanding complement clauses of the type tested is very similar in the MH and NR children matched on verbal MA. The MH children processed deep structure relations by identifying the subject-agent of the main and complement clause in the same way as NR children. Lack of interaction between comprehension of the four construction types and the two groups of the subjects suggests that MH and NR children use essentially the same syntactic information in order to process semantic relations. Informal parsing of the four construction types has provided no evidence that MH children are committed users of deviant strategies or infrequently occurring normal response patterns in sentence comprehension compared to NR children. That is, higher performance on G-ask (ask information) and G-promise, where NPl had to be assigned to the main and complement clause as the subject reference compared to lower performance on constructions G-request and G-tell (give information) requiring NP2 to be the subject reference of the complement clause shows clearly that MH children make use of syntax to the same extent as NR children (cf. hypothesis l(a)). In this respect, the data of the present study agree with those reported by Bridges and Smith (1984) on comprehension of active-passive voice, and by Cromer (1974/1978) on comprehension of complement clauses of the type “the duck is easy to bite” vs. “the duck is glad to bite” (cf. hypothesis l(b)).

Lower, however, performance on G-request and G-tell (give information) by MH and NR children (cf. hypothesis l(c)) needs an explanation. The error patterns on transforming indirect speech to direct by NR children suggest that syntactic relations in the four constructions cannot be considered to a vis-a-vis worder-order strategy, but to semantic constraints operating within the constructions. That is, G-ask (ask information) is assigned a question meaning in general, which concerns both the speaker (i.e., what fruit should I buy?) and the listener (i.e., what fruit are you going to buy?), while G-promise is often treated as implying an assertion (i.e., I said that you had to study more) instead of an undertaking meaning (i.e., I will study more). G-request is assigned a communicative meaning


in the sense of assertion (say) in modal form (i.e., I will study more) instead of order command. And tell (give information) is assigned a meaning of assertion and/or question signaled by the wh- word complementizer (i.e., I will wear these shoes or what shoes should I or should you wear?). This underspecialized meaning assigned to four matrix verbs resulted in a considerable proportion of incorrect syntactic role allocation. It is, then, likely that MI-I children might operate under similar semantic constraints, although they were not able to express these constraints through overt transformation of indirect speech to direct as NR children did.

In close relation to hypothesis l(c) should also be considered hypothesis 2(a) concerning the psychological effect of the MDP advocated by Chomsky (1969, 1972, 1982). The present data with the MH and NR children render the psychological status of the MDP debatable. If Chomsky were correct in her reasoning that the closest NP to the complement clause verb, in terms of surface distance, tends to be selected as the subject reference of the complement clause in constructions 1 to 4, performance on constructions 3 and 4 would have been significantly higher than performance on constructions 1 and 2. The results reverse the acquisition order of the four constrtiction types for the group of MH and NR children (cf. also Natsopoulos and Xeromeritou, in press; Warden, 1981, 1986).

In contrast to MDP, the SRP (Lederberg & Maratsos, 1981; Maratsos, 1974) is partially supported by these data (cf. hypothesis 2(a) and 2(b)). MH and NR children are better able to identify semantic roles in constructions 1 and 2, where NPl is the subject reference in either clause than semantic roles in constructions 3 and 4, where NP2 is the subject reference in complement clause.

It appears that learning of semantic constraints for constructions such as these is a long process. Given, however, the fact that the mean CA of the MH children is about twelve (cf. the Method section) and of the NR about five and eight months one would argue that the majority of the MH children may never accomplish linguistic knowledge to comprehend constructions of this kind as compared to NR children. Pilot testing data with older NR school children have shown that comprehension of constructions 1, 2 and 3 is erroless, but construction 4 is still problematic (see also Natsopoulos & Xeromeritou, in press), regardless of their performance on PPVT (Dunn, 1965)

It seems as if comprehension of certain constructions does not go hand in hand with verbal MA neither for the NR nor for the MH children, as Kramer et als’ (1972) findings with older children and adults have shown. This fact also explains why NR children, although differ in mean MA to

214 D . Natsopoulos and A. Xeromeritou

CA by almost 15 months performed lower than one would have expected. Indeed, the step-wise regression on language performance with PPVT

MA has shown that PPVT MA is a poor predictor for both MH and NR children (multiple R=.12 and .14; R2 change=.02 and .02, respectively; cf. Table 4 and hypothesis 3).

In contrast to these similarities, there were some interesting differences between the MH and NR children. Digit Span did not account for language performance by MH children (multiple R=.02 and R2 change=O.OO), supporting Dewart’s (1979) claims who found no correlation of memory span with active-passive voice comprehension. Digit Span and verbal IQ factors account for equally large proportions of explained variance in language performance by NR children (multiple R=.36 and .36, ~~05; R2 change=.13 and .13, respectively), while IQ accounts for a very small (if an R 1

) proportion of explained variance in MH children (multiple R=.14; change=.02; cf. Table 4 and hypothesis 3).

Also, the MH children appeared more vulnerable to ambiguities arising from reading the pictures over the comprehension task, although this difference was not significant in the two groups (28.13% vs. 9.34%, cf. Table 2).

Likewise, the NR children were able, within limits, to transform indirect speech to direct (28.13%) compared to MH children who, although probed by the experimenters kept consistently repeating the sentence in hand in indirect speech. It is assumed that transformation of indirect speech to direct is an indication of reflection on language itself, and a skill requiring meta1inguisti.c awareness which MH children are less capable of demonstrating as compared to comprehension.

Alternatively, one may argue that MH children might not see the reason why they should ask, promise, request and tell in a fictitious condition compared with young NR children who have begun to leflect on language and see it as a medium independent of the situation to which it refers. It is then argued that transformation of indirect speech to direct requires a sort of linguistic sophistication as other researchers contend (Chomsky, 1982; Tanz, 1983; Warden, 1986). This linguistic sophistication helps the NR children reconstruct the conversational context and see that asking for information, making a promise, requesting and giving information, as the four construction types meant, presuppose differing role status between the speaker and the listener. That is, asking for information (construction 1) presupposes acknowledgment of someone else’s expertise as it is conveyed by construction 4, while requesting (construction 3) presupposes a dominant role on the speaker’s part and a submissive one, actual or imaginable, on the listener’s part in a two-way information flow. Making a promise, on the other hand, presupposes that the speaker is able to perform


the action to his conversational partner (listener) and that the listener believes that the speaker is able to fulfill what the promise is about (Searle, 1969).

It should, however, be remarked that the preceding context was not particularly helpful to NR children and of no use to MI-I children in order to integrate the following construction into a conversational flow. MI-I children may not be used to deal with such a task which imposes greater demands on them than they are able to face.

In conclusion, MH children use the same syntactic information in order to process semantic relations in complement clauses as do young NR children matched on verbal MA (Bridges & Smith, 1984, Cromer, 1974/1978). But even the oldest MI-I children failed to provide evidence of metalinguistic ability compared to young NR children.

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Language behavior by mildly handicapped and nonretarded children on complement clauses