Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research Vol.53 1307-1320 October 2010. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2010/09-0016)
© American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrowCustom Print
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow My Folders
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Garrity, A. W.
Right arrow Articles by Oetting, J. B.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Garrity, A. W.
Right arrow Articles by Oetting, J. B.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Delicious   Add to Digg   Add to Facebook   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Articles

Auxiliary BE Production by African American English–Speaking Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment

April W. Garrity
Janna B. Oetting
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

Contact author: April W. Garrity, who is now at the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Armstrong Atlantic State University, 11935 Abercorn Street, Savannah, GA 31419. E-mail: april.garrity{at}armstrong.edu.

Purpose: To examine 3 forms (am, is, are) of auxiliary BE production by African American English (AAE)–speaking children with and without specific language impairment (SLI).

Method: Thirty AAE speakers participated: 10 six-year-olds with SLI, 10 age-matched controls, and 10 language-matched controls. BE production was examined through samples and a probe.

Results: Across tasks, visual inspection suggested that the children with SLI overtly marked BE at lower rates than the controls, and all groups marked am at higher rates than is and are, with few dialect-inappropriate errors. Within the samples, the children also overtly marked is at higher rates when preceded by it/that/what than when it was preceded by a personal pronoun. A subset of these results was confirmed statistically. The children's marking of BE also varied across tasks; for the age-matched controls, this variation was tied to their AAE dialect densities.

Conclusions: These findings show across-dialect similarities and differences between children's acquisition of AAE and mainstream American English. Similarities involve the rate of the children's BE marking as a function of their clinical status and the nature of their dialect-inappropriate errors. Differences involve the children's rates of BE marking as a function of the form, context, and task.

KEY WORDS: African American English (AAE), specific language impairment, grammatical morphology


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Delicious Delicious   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Facebook Facebook   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?