Edited by Larisa Avram, Anca Sevcenco and Veronica Tomescu
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 65] 2021
► pp. 67–82
This paper investigates the production of relative clauses (RCs) by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children/adolescents, focusing on cost-reducing RCs strategies that may circumvent syntactic language impairment. Different types of RCs are elicited from participants at risk of language impairment (LI) and an age-matched control group. The results support the differential demands of these structures. Group differences are restricted to moderate-severe LI participants on standard direct object (DO) RCs. The greater demands of indirect object/prepositional phrase (IO/PP) RCs in relation to DO RCs can be nevertheless noticed in the use of resumptive pronouns predominantly in IO/PP RCs. More truncated/inappropriate responses appear in the LI group. Although cost-reducing strategies can largely circumvent LI effects, the overall quality of responses can distinguish LI children.