Cover not available

Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2015
Edited by Björn Köhnlein and Jenny Audring
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 32] 2015
► pp. 16–32

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF

Grammatical and pragmatic properties of the DP in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and in children with High Functioning Autism (HFA)

 | University of Pennsylvania
 | Universiteit van Amsterdam
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 17 December 2015
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.32.02cre
This study investigates whether grammar and pragmatics are separate linguistic components or not, and whether children with SLI and children with HFA have overlapping or distinct linguistic profiles. We examine two DP-related phenomena: the mass-count distinction (grammatical) and the choice for a definite/indefinite article (pragmatic). We tested 27 children with HFA aged 6–14, age and gender matched to 27 children with SLI, and 27 TD controls on a Quantity Judgment Task (mass-count) and an Elicited Production Task (article choice). Our results show that pragmatics can be impaired independently from grammar (in HFA) and vice versa (in SLI), providing evidence for a modular view of grammar and pragmatics, and against an overlap in the profiles of SLI and HFA.
References (34)
American Psychiatric Association. 2000. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barner, D. & J. Snedeker. 2005. “Quantity judgments and individuation: Evidence that mass nouns count”. Cognition 971.41–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S. 1988. “Social and pragmatic deficits in autism: Cognitive or affective?” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 18:3.379–402. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Belder, Marijke. 2011. Roots and Affixes. Eliminating Lexical Categories from Syntax. LOT Publications, Utrecht.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bishop, Dorothy. 2000. “Pragmatic language impairment: A correlate of SLI, a distinct subgroup, or part of the autistic continuum”. Speech and language impairments in children: Causes, characteristics, intervention and outcome ed. by D. Bishop and L. Leonard, 99–113. Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 2005. In Name Only: Structuring Sense vol. I1. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chondrogianni, V., & T. Marinis. 2015. “Production of definite and indefinite articles in typically developing English-speaking children and children with SLI”. Lingua, 1551.9–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. 1983. The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedmann, Naama & Rama Novogrodsky. 2008. “Subtypes of SLI: SySLI, PhoSLI, LeSLI, and PraSLI”. Language Acquisition and Development ed. by A. Gavarró & M.J. Freitas, 205–217. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press/CSP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedmann, N., & R. Novogrodsky. 2011. “Which questions are most difficult to understand? The comprehension of Wh questions in three subtypes of SLI.” Lingua 1211.367–382. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frith, U. 1989. “Autism: Explaining the enigma”. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31.465–468.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Froud, K., & H. van der Lely. 2008. “The count-mass distinction in typically developing and grammatically specifically language impaired children: New evidence on the role of syntax and semantics”. Journal of communication disorders 41:3.274–303. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibson, J., C. Adams, E. Lockton, & J. Green. 2013. “Social communication disorder outside autism? A diagnostic classification approach to delineating pragmatic language impairment, high functioning autism and specific language impairment”. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 54:11.1186–1197. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hacohen, Aviya & Schaeffer, Jeannette. 2013. On the syntactic mass/count distinction in Hebrew child language – Language change? Paper presented at the Scandinavian Conference on Linguistics, Workshop on syntactic issues in Language Acquisition.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hawkins, J.A. 1991. “On (in)definite articles: Implicatures and (un)grammaticality prediction”. Journal of Linguistics 271.405–442. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heim, Irene. 1982. The semantics of definite and indefinite NPs. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst: GLSA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 2006. “Toward a Fregean pragmatics: Voraussetzung, Nebengedanke, Andeutung.” Explorations in Pragmatics: Linguistic, Cognitive, and Intercultural Aspects, ed. by L.R. Horn & I. Kecskes, 39–69. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Hout, A., K. Harrigan, & J. de Villiers. 2010. “Asymmetries in the acquisition of definite and indefinite NPs”. Lingua 120(8). 1973–1990. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, Annette. 1979. A Functional Approach to Child Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kjelgaard, M.M. & Tager-Flusberg, H. 2001. “An investigation of language impairment in autism: Implications for genetic subgroups”. Language and cognitive processes 16:2-3.287–308. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van der Lely, H. 1998. “SLI in children: Movement, economy and deficits in the computational-syntactic system”. Language Acquisition 71.161–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maratsos, Michael P. 1976. The use of definite and indefinite reference in young children: An experimental study of semantic acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noveck, I. 2001. “When children are more logical than adults: Experimental investigations of scalar implicature”. Cognition 78:2.165–188. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Papafragou, A. 2006. “From scalar semantics to implicature: Children’s interpretation of aspectuals”. Journal of Child Language 331.721–757. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Papafragou, A, & J. Musolino. 2003. “Scalar implicatures: experiments at the semantics pragmatics interface”. Cognition 86:3.253–282. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perovic, A., N. Modyanova & K. Wexler. 2013. “Comprehension of reflexive and personal pronouns in children with autism: A syntactic or pragmatic deficit?” Applied Psycholinguistics 34:4.813–835. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Polite, E.J., L.B. Leonard & F.D. Roberts. 2011. “The use of definite and in-definite articles by children with specific language impairment.” International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 131.291–300. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pouscoulous, N., I.A. Noveck, G. Politzer & A. Bastide. 2007. “A developmental investigation of processing costs in implicature production”. Language Acquisition 14:4.347–375. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rumelhart, David & James L. McClelland. 1987. Parallel Distributed Processing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schaeffer, J. & L. Matthewson. 2005. “Grammar and pragmatics in the acquisition of article systems”. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 23:1.53–101. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Semel, Eleanor M., Elisabeth H. Wiig, Wayne A. Secord & Willem Kort. 2008. CELF® 4 NL: Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals: Nederlandse versie. Pearson.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert. 1974. “Pragmatic presuppositions”. Semantics and Philosophy ed. by M.K. Munitz & P. Unger, 197–214. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1978. “Assertion”. Syntax and Semantics 9: Pragmatics ed. by P. Cole, 313–332. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tager-Flusberg, Helen 1989. “A psycholinguistic perspective on language development in the autistic child”. Autism: Nature, diagnosis, and treatment ed. by G. Dawson, 92–115. New York: Guilford press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Andreou, Georgia, Vasiliki Lymperopoulou & Despina Papoudi
2025. Similarities and Differences in Pragmatic Skills Between Greek Speaking School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Language Disorder. Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders 9:4 ► pp. 665 ff. DOI logo
Dai, Huilin, Xiaowei He, Haopeng Yu, Yunting Wang & Shuang Hu
2025. Effects of Syntactic Complexity on the Comprehension of Passive Clauses and wh-questions in Children with Developmental Language Disorder and Autism Plus Language Impairment. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders DOI logo
Andreou, Georgia, Vasiliki Lymperopoulou & Vasiliki Aslanoglou
2024. Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): similarities in pragmatic language abilities. A systematic review. International Journal of Developmental Disabilities 70:5 ► pp. 777 ff. DOI logo
Andreou, Georgia, Vasiliki Lymperopoulou & Vasiliki Aslanoglou
2025. Structural language in neurodevelopmental disorders: comparison between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental language disorder (DLD). Frontiers in Education 10 DOI logo
Andreou, Georgia, Vasiliki Lymperopoulou & Vasiliki Aslanoglou
2025. Predictive Language Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Language Disorder. In Empowering Innovations in Advanced Autism Research and Management, ► pp. 197 ff. DOI logo
Garrido, Dunia, Juana Munoz, Dolores Fresneda, Elvira Mendoza, Rocío Garcia-Retamero & Gloria Carballo
2024. Grammatical comprehension in language and communication disorders. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 38:9 ► pp. 819 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue