Acquisition and online processing of Voice in children with Developmental Language Disorder: Is non-active morphology a clinical marker?

• Applicant: Dr. Anastasia Paspali
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2021 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 452974831

This project aims to explore voice acquisition and processing in Greek children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Non-active voice morphology, marking passive verbs in languages such as English and German, has been found to be acquired around age 5;0 in typical monolingual acquisition. On the other hand, children with DLD show persistent and unresolved difficulties even at ages 11-13;0 accompanied with lower grammar, vocabulary, and working memory skills. These difficulties can hinder fluent communication and can impact performance in school. They are also more persistent in languages with complex voice systems, where the same grammatical form is used to mark various verb categories and not only passive verbs, such as in Greek. Within a psycholinguistic framework, this project aims to test the acquisition and online processing of voice in Greek children with DLD. Furthermore, this project will be the first study which explicitly addresses whether voice can be considered a potential clinical marker for DLD in Greek. The project also aims to compare the DLD-children not only with a Typically Developing (TD) age-matched group of monolingual children but also with a younger TD group of children (matched in the language age with the DLD group) to address delayed vs. deviant development of voice in DLD (i.e., whether children with DLD lag behind their TD peers, being on par with a younger TD group, or whether they exhibit their own acquisition pattern). Finally, a comparison with a bilingual group of TD children who live in Germany and have Greek as a heritage language will elucidate whether limited input and exposure to the Greek language in TD heritage children leads to a similar profile as in language impairment (DLD children). The children will be tested in a battery of cognitive and language assessments along with three assessments on voice tapping into their comprehension, production, and online processing and measuring their accuracy, preferences, and reaction-times. Consequently, at the theoretical level, the project will shed light on the acquisition patterns predicted by different syntactic models proposed for voice in Greek and also on the psycholinguistic models proposed for voice in DLD. Furthermore, it will allow research to better disentangle the linguistic profile of DLD children from the heritage bilingual children and the linguistic profile of DLD children from the younger monolingual TD group. Finally, at the practical level it can significantly contribute to the improvement of diagnosis in DLD with the evaluation of voice as a clinical marker. The project aims to do so by using a solid linguistic theory background that underpins its methodology and articulates clear predictions, by offering empirical evidence on the topic using psycholinguistic measures with high sensitivity across various group comparisons, and by assessing whether and to what extent this new knowledge can facilitate the diagnosis of DLD.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: Greece
• Host: Professorin Dr. Despina Papadopoulou