Part of
Specific Language Impairment: Current trends in researchEdited by Stavroula Stavrakaki
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 58] 2015
► pp. 145–174
Edited by Stavroula Stavrakaki
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 58] 2015
► pp. 145–174
The relationship between SLI in English and Modern Greek
Insights from computational models of language acquisition
We present a computational modelling approach to the study of SLI in two languages with different typological characteristics, namely English and Modern Greek. Our modelling approach was based on the development of three neural network (connectionist) architectures, each assumed to underlie the acquisition of a core domain of language (inflectional morphology, syntax comprehension, and syntax production). The architectures were exposed to artificial linguistic environments reflecting the characteristics of their target domains in English and Greek. Computational simulations also considered conditions of atypical learning constraints, corresponding to different theoretical proposals for the type of deficit underlying SLI. The simulation results, combined with some shared properties of the three models, point to a unified explanation of the impairment under the connectionist framework.
References
Bishop, D.V.M
1994 Grammatical errors in specific language impairment: Competence or performance limitations? Applied Psycholinguistics 15: 507–550. 
1997 Uncommon Understanding: Development and Disorders of Language Comprehension in Children. Hove: Psychology Press.
Chang, F., Dell, G.S., Bock, J.K. & Griffin, Z.M
2000 Structural priming as implicit learning: A comparison of models of sentence production. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 29: 217–229.
Chang, F
2002 Symbolically speaking: A connectionist model of sentence production. Cognitive Science 26: 609–651.
Chomsky, N
1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
1986 Knowledge of language: Its Nature, Origin and Use. New York NY: Praeger.
1991 Some notes on the economy of derivation and representation. In Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar, R. Freidin (ed.), 417–454. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
1995 The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
1998 Minimalist Iniquities: The framework. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Clahsen, H. & Dalalakis, J
1999 Tense and agreement in Greek SLI: A case study. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 24: 1–25.
Diamanti, M
2000 Simple morphosyntactic structures in the speech of a child with Specific Language Impairment. In Proceedings of the 8th Symposium of the Panhellenic Association of Logopedist, 201–220. Athens: Ellinika Grammata. (In Greek)
Dick, F., Bates, E., Wulfeck, B., Aydellot, J., Donkers, N. & Gernsbacher, M
2001 Language deficits, localization, and grammar: Evidence for a distributive model of language breakdown in aphasic patients and neurologically intact individuals. Psychological Review 108: 759–788.
Dick, F., Wulfeck, B., Krupa-Kwiatkowski, M. & Bates, E
2004 The development of complex sentence interpretation in typically developing children compared with children with specific language impairments or early unilateral focal lesions. Developmental Science 7(3): 360–377.
Elman, J.L
1990 Finding structure in time. Cognitive Science 14: 179–211.
1991 Distributed representations, Simple Recurrent Networks, and grammatical structure. Machine Learning 7: 195–225.
1993 Learning and development in neural networks: The importance of starting small. Cognition 48: 71–99.
Francis, W. & Kucera, H
1982 Frequency Analysis of English Usage. Boston MA: Houghton Miffin.
Fromkin, V., Blair, D. & Collins, P.C
2002 An Introduction to Language, 7th edn. Boston MA: Thomson Heinle.
Gathercole, S.E. & Baddeley, A.D
1990 Phonological memory deficits in language disordered children: Is there a causal connection? Journal of Memory and Language 29: 336–360.
Gopnik, M
1990 Feature-blind grammar and dysphasia. Nature 344 (62–68): 715.
Gopnik, M. & Crago, M
1991 Familial aggregation of the developmental language disorders. Cognition 39: 1–50.
Hatzigeorgiou, N., Spiliotopoulou, A., Vacalopoulou, A., Papakostopoulou, A., Piperidis, S., Gavriilidou, M. & Karayanis, G
2000 Hellenic National Corpus (HNC): A modern Greek corpus on the internet. In
Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Department, School of Philology, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
, 812–821, May 2000, Thessaloniki. (In Greek)
Hoeffner, J.H. & McClelland, J.L
1993 Can a perceptual processing deficit explain the impairment of inflectional morphology in developmental dysphasia? A computational investigation. In Proceedings of the 25th Child Language Research Forum, E.V. Clark (ed.), 38–49. Stanford CA: CSLI & Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.
Holton, D., Mackridge, P. & Philippaki-Warburton, I
2003 Greek: An Essential Grammar of the Modern Language. London: Routledge.
Hutzler, F, Ziegler, J.C., Perry, C., Wimmer, H. & Zorzi, M
2004 Do current connectionist learning models account for reading development in different languages? Cognition 91(3): 273–296.
Joanisse, M.F
2004 Specific language impairments in children: Phonology, semantics and the English past tense. Current Directions in Psychological Science 13(4): 156–160.
Joanisse, M.F. & Seidenberg M.S
1999 Impairments in verb morphology after brain injury: A connectionist model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 96: 7592–7597.
Joanisse, M.F. & Seidenberg, M.S
2003 Phonology and syntax in specific language impairment: Evidence from a connectionist model. Brain and Language 86: 40–56.
Kail, R
1994 A method for studying the generalized slowing hypothesis in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 37: 418–421.
Kail, M. & Diakogiorgi, K
1994 Morphology and word order in the processing of Greek sentences: A crosslinguistic and developmental perspective. In Themes in Greek Linguistics, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory [Current Issues in Linguistics Theory 117], I. Phillipaki-Warburton, K. Nicolaidis & M. Sifianou (eds), 325–332. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Karaminis, T
2012 Connectionist Modelling of Morphosyntax in Typical and Atypical Development for English and Modern Greek. PhD dissertation, University of London.
Karaminis, T.N. & Thomas M.S.C
2012a Connectionism. In Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, Seel, Norbert M. (ed.), Part 3, 767–771. New York NY: Springer.
Karaminis, T.N. & Thomas, M.S.C
2012b Connectionist theories of learning. In Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, Part 3, N.M. Seel (ed.), 771–774. New York NY: Springer.
Karaminis, T.N., & Thomas, M.S.C
2010 A cross-linguistic model of the acquisition of inflectional morphology in English and Modern Greek. In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (eds), 730–735. Austin TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Leonard, L.B
1989 Language learnability and specific language impairment in children. Applied Psycholinguistics 10: 179–202.
1998 Children with Specific Language Impairment. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Leonard, L.B., Bortolini, U., Caselli, M.C., McGregor, K.K. & Sabbadini, L
1992 Morphological deficits in children with specific language impairment: The status of features in the underlying grammar. Language Acquisition 2: 151–179.
Leonard, L.B., McGregor, K.K. & Allen, G
1992 Grammatical morphology and speech perception in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 35: 1076–85.
Lupyan, G. & Christiansen, M.H
2002 Case, word order and language learnability: Insights from connectionist modeling. In
Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
, 596–601. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
MacWhinney, B. & Bates, E
1989 The Crosslinguistic Study of Sentence Processing. Cambridge: CUP.
Mareschal, D., Johnson, M.H., Sirois, S., Thomas, M.S.C. & Westermann, G
(eds) 2007a Neuroconstructivism, Vol. 1: How the Brain Constructs Cognition. Oxford: OUP.
Mareschal, D., Sirois, S., Westermann, G. & Johnson, M.H
(eds) 2007b Neuroconstructivism, Vol. 2: Perspectives and Prospects. Oxford: OUP.
Marshall, C.R. & van der Lely, H.K
2006 A challenge to current models of past tense inflection: The impact of phonotactics. Cognition 100(2): 302–320.
Marslen-Wilson, W.D. & Tyler, L.K
1998 Rules, representations, and the English past tense. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2: 428–435.
Mastropavlou, M
2003a The Status of gender and agreement features in the grammar of two SLI Children. In Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, M. Mattheoudakis & A. Psaltou-Joysey (eds), 356–373, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
2003b Specific Language Impairment: Description of the speech of three children with SLI and the role of therapy in their development. In Disorders of Communication and Speech: Prevention, Research, Intervention, and New Technologies in Health, M. Glikas & G. Kalomiris (eds), 208–224. Athens: Ellinika Grammata.
Matthews, D.E. & Theakston, A.L
2006 Errors of omission in English-speaking children’s production of plurals and the past tense: The effects of frequency, phonology, and competition. Cognitive Science 30: 1027–1052.
Norris, D
2005 How do computational models help us build better theories? In Twenty-First Century Psycholinguistics: Four Cornerstones, A. Cutler (ed.), 331–346. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Pinker, S
1999 Words and Rules. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Plaut, D.C
2000 Methodologies for the computer modeling of human cognitive processes. In Handbook of Neuropsychology, Vol. 1, F. Boller, J. Grafman & G. Rizzotti (eds). Oxford: Elsevier.
Plunkett, K. & Juola, P
1999 A connectionist model of English past tense and plural morphology. Cognitive Science 23: 463–490.
Plunkett, K. & Marchman, M
1991 U-shaped learning and frequency effects in a multi-layered perceptron: Implications for child language acquisition. Cognition 38(1): 43–102.
Plunkett, K. & Marchman, V
1993 From rote learning to system building: Acquiring verb morphology in children and connectionist nets. Cognition 48(1): 21–69.
Rice, M.L
2000 Grammatical symptoms of specific language impairment. In Speech and Language Impairments in Children: Causes, Characteristics, Intervention and Outcome, D.V.M. Bishop & L.B. Leonard (eds), 17–34. Hove: Psychology Press.
Rice, M.L., Wexler, K. & Cleave, P
1995 Specific Language Impairment as a period of extended optional infinitive. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 38: 850–863.
Richardson, F.M., Thomas, M.S.C. & Price, C.J
2010 Neuronal activation for semantically reversible sentences. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22 (5): 943–954.
Rumelhart, D.E., Hinton, G.E. & McClelland, J.L
1986 A general framework for parallel distributed processing. In Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Vol. 1: Foundations, D.E. Rumelhart, J.L. McClellandthe PDP Group & (eds), 45–76. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Rumelhart, D.E., Hinton, G. & Williams, R
1986 Learning internal representations by error propagation. In Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Vol. 1: Foundations, D.E. Rumelhart, J.L. McClellandthe PDP Group & (eds), 318–362. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Rumelhart, D.E. & McClelland, J.L
1986 On learning the past tenses of English verbs. In Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Vol. 2: Psychological and Biological Models, J.L. McClelland & D.E. Rumelhart (eds), 216–271. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Rumelhart, D.E., McClelland, J.Lthe PDP Research Group
& (eds) 1986 Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Vol. 1: Foundations. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Seidenberg, M.S
2011 Reading in different writing systems: One architecture, multiple solutions. In Dyslexia Across Languages: Orthography and the Gene-Brain-Behavior Link, P. McCardle, J. Ren & O. Tzeng (eds), 146–148. Baltimore MD: Paul H. Brookes.
Smith, N
2008 Morphosyntactic Skills and Phonological Short-term Memory in Greek Preschool Children with Specific Language Impairment. PhD dissertation, University of Reading.
Stamouli, S
2000 The grammatical categories of tense, aspect, and subject-verb agreement: A comparative study of a Greek-speaking child with specific language impairment and a typical developing child. In
Proceedings of the 8th Symposium of the Panhellenic Association of Logopedists
, 159–174. Athens: Ellinika Grammata. (In Greek).
Stavrakaki, S
2002 Sentence comprehension in Greek SLI children. In Investigations in Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, N. Hewlett, L. Kelly & F. Windsor (eds), 57–72. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
2006 Developmental perspectives on Specific Language Impairment: Evidence from the production of wh-questions by Greek SLI children over time. Advances in Speech-Language Pathology 8(4): 384–396.
Stavrakaki, S. & Clahsen, H
2009 The perfective past tense in Greek child language. Journal of Child Language 36: 113–142.
Stavrakaki, S., Koutsandreas, K., & Clahsen, H
2012 The perfective past tense in Greek children with Specific Language Impairment. Morphology 22: 143–171.
Stephany, U
1997 The acquisition of Greek. In The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, Vol. 4, D.I. Slobin (ed.), 183–333. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoicates.
Tallal, P. & Piercy, M
1973a Defects of non-verbal auditory perception in children with developmental aphasia. Nature 241: 468–469.
1973b Developmental aphasia: Impaired rate of nonverbal processing as a function of sensory modality. Neuropsychologia 11: 389–398.
Thomas, M.S.C
2005 Characterising compensation. Cortex 41(3): 434–442.
Thomas, M.S.C. & Karmiloff-Smith, A
2002 Are developmental disorders like cases of adult brain damage? Implications from connectionist modelling. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25: 727–788.
2003 Modeling language acquisition in atypical phenotypes. Psychological Review 110 (4): 647–682.
Thomas, M.S.C. & Redington, M
2004 Modelling atypical syntax processing. In Proceedings of COLING 2004, Psycho-Computational Models of Human Language Acquisition, W.G. Sakas (ed.), 87–94. Geneva: COLING.
Tsimpli, I.M
2001 LF-interpretability and language development: A study of verbal and nominal features in Greek normally developing and SLI children. Brain and Language 77: 432–448.
Tzanidaki, D.I
1995 Greek word order: Towards a new approach. UCLWorking Paper in Linguistics 7: 247–277.
Ullman, M. & Pierpont, E
2005 Specific Language Impairment is not specific to language: The Procedural Deficit hypothesis. Cortex 41(3): 399–433.
van der Lely, H.K.J
1996 Empirical evidence for the modularity of language from Grammatical SLI children. In Proceedings of the 20th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Vol. 2, A. Stringfellow, D. Cahana-Amitay, E. Hughes & A. Zukowski (eds), 781–791. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.
van der Lely, H.K.J. & Battell, J
2003 Wh-movement in children with grammatical SLI: A test of the RDDR hypothesis. Language 79: 153–181.
van der Lely, H.K.J. & Ullman, M
2001 Past tense morphology in specifically language impaired children and normally developing children. Language and Cognitive Processes 16: 177–217.