Preschoolers’ imitation of sentential complement sentences: Does the nature of the matrix clause matter?

Preschoolers’ earliest productions of sentential complement sentences have matrix clauses that are limited in form. Diessel proposed that matrix clauses in these early productions are propositionally empty fixed phrases that lack semantic and syntactic integration with the clausal complement. By 4 years of age, however, preschoolers produce sentential complement sentences with matrix clauses that are more varied. Diessel proposed that the matrix clauses in these later productions semantically and syntactically embed the complement clause. We refer to these matrix clauses as formulaic and true, respectively. Diessel’s hypothesis about the development of sentential complement sentences was based on an analysis of spontaneous language. The purpose of this study was to evaluate Diessel’s hypothesis with an experimental sentence imitation task wherein stimuli varied in the nature of the matrix clause. Thirty children with typical language development participated; 10 children in each age group (3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) imitated 50 sentential complement sentences that included either a true or a formulaic matrix clause; the structure of the dependent clauses did not vary. Dependent variables were percent sentence imitation and percent matrix clause imitation. There was a significant main effect for matrix clause type on imitation of sentences and matrix clauses. There was also a significant main effect for age on imitation of sentences and matrix clauses. Significant matrix clause type-by-age interactions were such that percent sentence imitation and percent matrix clause imitation varied by age. Three- and 4-year-olds were less proficient than 5-year-olds on imitation of sentences with true matrix clauses and on imitations of true matrix clauses. Only 3- and 4-year-olds were less proficient imitating true matrix clauses than formulaic matrix clauses. Experimental findings support Diessel’s hypothesis that there is a developmental progression in the nature of preschoolers’ production of sentential complement sentences.

Sentence Imitation With Masked Morphemes in Czech: Memory, Morpheme Frequency, and Morphological Richness

Purpose This study examined two markers of language impairment (LI) in a single experiment, testing sentence imitation and grammatical morphology production using an imitation task with masked morphemes. One goal was to test predictions of the morphological richness account of LI in Czech. We also tested the independent contributions of language and memory skills to sentence imitation performance. Method Seventeen children with LI (5;1–7;6 [years;months]) and 17 vocabulary-matched typically developing (TD) children (3;8–4;11) were administered a sentence imitation task where each sentence had one noun or verb ending replaced by a coughing sound. In addition, a receptive vocabulary and the digit span (backward and forward) tasks were administered. Results Children with LI were significantly less accurate than TD children in sentence imitation task. Both vocabulary and digit span had unique effects on sentence imitation scores. Children with LI were less successful in imitating the target words, especially verbs. However, if they succeeded, their completions of the masked morphemes were no less accurate than in TD children. The accuracy of completions was affected by the morpheme frequency and homophony, but these effects were similar in TD and affected children. Conclusions Sentence imitation is a measure of language skills and verbal memory. Results on morpheme completions are consistent with processing models of LI, but some predictions of the morphological richness model were not confirmed. The results suggest that children with LI might have a deficit in organizing morphosyntactic relations in sentences, rather than in morphological processing proper.

Children’s and adults’ initial phonological acquisition of a foreign language

This study compared children’s and adults’ L2 perception and production in the first hours of exposure to a foreign language. A total of 10 German children and 19 German adults performed a phoneme discrimination task and a sentence imitation task in Polish at two testing times. Exposed to a comparable input, the adult learners were found to perceive Polish sibilant contrasts more accurately than their child counterparts and to maintain this advantage over a two-week-long instruction. However, the two groups did not differ in their developing ability to produce the tested sibilants. A great deal of inter- and intra-individual differences in both learner groups was also attested. Our findings suggest that young L2 instructed learners are not necessarily better and/or faster perceivers and producers of novel language sounds than adult L2 instructed learners, who are able to discriminate a range of novel sibilant pairs even after very limited L2 exposure.

Nonword Repetition and Sentence Imitation as Clinical Markers for Primary Language Impairment in bilingual French-English- and English-French-speaking children in Northern Ontario

Studies indicate that nonword repetition and sentence imitation are useful tools when assessing bilingual children. Bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI) typically score lower on these two tasks than their typically developing counterparts. Studies show that bilingual children are not disadvantaged during nonword repetition if they have limited language exposure. However, since sentence imitation tasks are constructed with words from the target language, it is expected that it would be more influenced by previous language exposure. The goal of this article will be to review the influence of bilingual exposure on both tasks. This review provides the theoretical background for future studies that will compare the accuracy of both tasks when identifying PLI in bilingual children.

On the Optimization of Sentence Imitation in Primary School English Teaching from the Perspective of Strong Memes

A sentence is an important unit in English language, and plays a crucial role in language teaching and learning as well. For many years, sentence teaching is always worth discussion in English teaching, because sentence imitation is very important for students’ construction of logical discourse. This paper, based on memetics, proposes some certain optimization strategies of sentence imitation in primary school English teaching from the perspective of strong memes, and points out that efficient sentence imitation is of great importance in primary school English teaching.