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J Speech Lang Hear Res. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2013 April 24.
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Published in final edited form as:
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2009 February ; 52(1): 98–117. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2008/07-0183).
The Use of Tense and Agreement by Hungarian-Speaking
Children with Language Impairment
Ágnes Lukács,
HAS-BME Cognitive Science Research Group, Budapest and Research Institute of Linguistics,
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Laurence B. Leonard,
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Bence Kas, and
Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences, Bárczi Gusztáv Faculty of Special Pedagogy, Department
of Phonetics and Logopedics, 4 Budapest University of Technology, Department of Cognitive
Science, Budapest, Hungary
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Csaba Pléh
Budapest University of Technology, Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest, Hungary
Abstract
Purpose—Hungarian is a null-subject language with both agglutinating and fusional elements in
its verb inflection system, and agreement between the verb and object as well as between the verb
and subject. These characteristics make this language a good test case for alternative accounts of
the grammatical deficits of children with language impairment (LI).
Method—Twenty-five children with LI and 25 younger children serving as vocabulary controls
(VC) repeated sentences whose verb inflections were masked by a cough. The verb inflections
marked distinctions according to tense, person, number, and definiteness of the object.
Results—The children with LI were significantly less accurate than the VC children, but
generally showed the same performance profile across the inflection types. The types of errors
were also similar in the two groups.
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Conclusions—Accounts that assume problems specific to agreement do not provide an
explanation for the observed pattern of findings. Although the findings are generally compatible
with accounts that assume processing limitations in children with LI, one such account, the
morphological richness account, was not accurate in all of its predictions. One nonmorphosyntactic factor -- the retention of sequences of sounds – appeared to be functionally
related to inflection accuracy and may prove to be important in a language with numerous
inflections such as Hungarian.
Children with language impairment (LI) show significant deficits in language ability without
accompanying deficits such as hearing impairment, neurological damage, or mental
retardation. Although children with LI represent a heterogeneous population, common
profiles can be identified. In English, for example, a very common profile is a mild to
moderate deficit in lexical skills and a more serious deficit in morphosyntax. Within the area
of morphosyntax, the use of tense and agreement morphemes seems to be especially
problematic.
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One complicating factor in the study of LI is that a common profile in one language is
uncommon or even absent in another language. For example, word order errors are common
in Swedish and German, but not in English. In Italian, verb inflections that express
agreement with the subject are not among the areas of special difficulty, unlike the case for
English.
Proposals for these cross-linguistic differences are beginning to emerge in the literature.
Following a brief review of these proposals, we will describe a study employing Hungarian,
a language that represents an excellent test case for the suitability of these alternative
proposals. Hungarian differs from other languages studied by LI researchers in key respects.
One characteristic is the agglutinating morphology with respect to tense and agreement,
where an inflection marking tense is followed by an inflection marking agreement, both
attached to the verb stem. A second important characteristic of Hungarian is the fact that
verb inflections agree with both the subject (in person and number) and the object (in
definiteness). As will be seen below, these characteristics have implications for current
accounts of the morphosyntactic difficulties seen in LI.
Recent Accounts of Morphosyntactic Deficits in LI
Morphological richness
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The “morphological richness” account has evolved from the findings of Leonard and his
colleagues (Leonard, Sabbadini, Leonard, & Volterra, 1987; Leonard, 1998, pp. 255–257;
Dromi, Leonard, Adam, & Zadunaisky-Ehrlich, 1999). According to this account,
extraordinary difficulties with tense and agreement morphemes are the result of an
interaction between a more general limitation in language ability and the properties of the
particular system of grammar that must be learned. Key details of the morphological
richness account were inspired by the Competition Model (e.g., MacWhinney, 1987; Bates
& MacWhinney, 1989), such as the views that languages differ in the details of grammar
that have the greatest cue validity, that the discovery and use of these cues are probabilistic
in nature, and that some cues have greater processing cost than others.
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An important assumption of the morphological richness account is that children with LI
have a limited processing capacity. For languages such as English, this limitation can be
problematic for the learning of grammatical morphology. Inflections are sparse in English
and bare stems are frequent. Faced with a limited processing capacity, then, children with LI
might devote their limited resources to the more prevalent information conveyed by word
order. Fewer resources would remain for the learning of grammatical morphology, requiring
more encounters with grammatical morphemes before they can be learned. In contrast,
children with LI acquiring languages with a rich inflectional morphology are expected to
devote their limited resources to this area of the grammar. Thus, differences in the use of
grammatical morphology between these children and their typically developing peers will be
smaller than in a language such as English. It is for this reason that the account gets its name
of “morphological richness.”
However, if the inflections themselves reflect a complex combination of grammatical
dimensions (e.g., tense, number, person, gender), problems can arise even in the area of
inflections in a language with a rich morphology. The more dimensions children must
consider simultaneously, the greater the demands on their limited processing capacity. These
demands can result in incomplete processing, requiring more encounters with the inflection
before it can become a stable part of the children’s grammar. Based on findings from Italian
and Hebrew, Leonard (1998) proposed that children with LI may approach their processing
limitations when four dimensions must be considered simultaneously. According to
Leonard, incompletely processed inflections are the functional equivalent of inflections with
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low frequency of occurrence because they are not registered consistently, and therefore do
not achieve sufficient strength in the child’s grammar to be retrieved as reliably as can be
accomplished by typically developing children. Given that children with LI must have a
greater number of encounters with each inflection before it is sufficiently established to be
retrieved for production with facility, the frequency of occurrence of the inflection in the
input is an important factor in the morphological richness account. It is predicted that
accuracy will be greater for inflections that are encountered more frequently in the input.
The morphological richness account’s focus on the number of dimensions in an inflection
system differs from an approach such as the Competition Model in that the latter places an
emphasis on cue validity. Thus, an inflection that reflects a complex combination of four
dimensions would be expected to be challenging for children with LI according to the
morphological richness account, but if that inflection has high cue validity, the number of
dimensions would play a much smaller role according to the Competition Model.
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Another assumption of the morphological richness account is that if errors occur, the
substitute inflection is expected to share features with the inflection that it replaces. That is,
the chief competitors of an appropriate inflection that is only weakly represented in the
child’s grammar will be inflections that are similar in their features but with greater strength.
In many instances, this may be a “near-miss” error – an inflection that possesses most but
not all features reflected in the correct form (e.g., Dromi et al., 1999; Bedore & Leonard,
2001). For example, a third person plural form in the past might be replaced by a third
person plural form in the present or a third person singular form in the past. Children with LI
are not expected to resort to a default form. For example, it is not expected that a third
person singular form in the present will be used as a general substitute without regard to the
features reflected in the correct form.
Agreement deficit
Clahsen and his colleagues (Clahsen, Bartke, & Göllner, 1997; Clahsen & Hansen, 1997;
Clahsen & Dalalakis, 1999; Eisenbeiss, Bartke, & Clahsen, 2005) have proposed that
children with LI have a selective syntactic deficit that affects agreement in particular. These
investigators adopted Chomsky’s (1995) distinction between interpretable and noninterpretable features, and posited that in LI, the verb’s non-interpretable features are not
properly acquired. Even in null-subject languages, subject-verb agreement is posited to be
problematic (Clahsen & Dalalakis, 1999). Errors are expected to be productions of default
forms, such as the production of a present third person singular inflection in contexts that
obligate a different inflection. The agreement deficit account does not predict difficulties
with tense.
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Non-Morphosyntactic Language Processing Factors
The morphological richness account is concerned with processing limitations within the
scope of morphosyntactic learning and use. This emphasis is well placed, of course, given
the striking limitations that children with LI exhibit in this area of language. However, other
important areas are important in LI, and these may have at least an indirect, negative impact
on morphosyntactic ability. Bishop, Adams, and Norbury (2006) have identified two
fundamental impairments in children with LI that are both heritable yet show minimal
etiological overlap (see also Conti-Ramsden, 2003). Not surprisingly, one of these is a
reduced ability to carry out grammatical computations. The behavioral measure most
frequently used to identify this limitation is a test of morphosyntactic ability, including the
use of tense and agreement morphemes (e.g., Rice & Wexler, 2001). The other fundamental
impairment is a deficit in the ability to retain sequences of speech sounds for brief periods of
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time. Nonword repetition tasks constitute the most frequent measures for this type of
problem (e.g., Gathercole, Willis, Baddeley, & Emslie, 1994).
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Although an ability to retain sound sequences of sounds is often associated with word
learning (e.g., Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993), it should be clear how limitations in the
ability to retain sound sequences could also play havoc with the learning of inflections. If a
child cannot retain a sequence that represents an inflection that marks tense and agreement,
it is likely that the acquisition of this inflection will be delayed. To the degree to which the
inflection system of a language contains many different sequences, the detrimental effect of
this retention problem could be considerable. This influence could occur even though
retention of sound sequences and grammatical computation are genetically and etiologically
distinct. First, as noted byBishop et al. (2006), many children with LI have a double deficit –
a deficit in both of these areas. Second, although poor retention of sound sequences appears
to be a deficit distinct from a deficit in grammatical computation, if the inflection system of
a language involves many different sequences, each of which must be detected and retained
by the child, the functional relationship between these two areas may be stronger than in a
language such as English.
The Contribution of Hungarian
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Hungarian possesses characteristics that make it extremely useful for evaluating the
morphological richness and agreement deficit accounts. Research on LI in this language,
then, might not only contribute to the development of clinical assessment and treatment
methods for Hungarian-speaking children with LI, but also contribute to theory development
or refinement. We provide a more detailed description of the structure of Hungarian tense
and agreement morphology in the next section. However, some of the highlights of
Hungarian and its relevance to these accounts of LI can be stated here. Hungarian is a nullsubject language with inflections for tense and inflections that simultaneously mark
agreement with the subject in person and number and agreement with the object (if any) in
definiteness.
The agreement deficit account assumes that the difficulty with agreement resides in the
agreement features of the verb. Therefore, even in a null-subject language such as
Hungarian, agreement inflections will be difficult for children with LI. This may be
especially so given that agreement is of two different types – agreement between the subject
and verb, and agreement between the verb and the object. Errors of agreement are expected
to be default forms such as present third person singular. However, tense features are not
affected; for this reason, errors on the tense marking of inflections are not predicted.
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According to the morphological richness account, children with LI acquiring a language
such as Hungarian, in which inflectional morphology plays a central role, will differ from
typical peers to a lesser extent than in a language such as English. However, this account
explicitly predicts that the processing capacity of children with SLI will begin to reach its
limits when four dimensions must be considered simultaneously as in Hungarian, in which
tense, person, number, and definiteness play a role in the verb inflection system. Errors
should not be default forms; rather inflections that differ from the correct inflection by only
a single feature (e.g., present first person singular indefinite in place of present first person
plural indefinite) should be the most likely. Accuracy will be greater for inflections with
higher frequency of occurrence in the language.
Hungarian is also a highly suitable language to evaluate the role that limitations in the ability
to retain sound sequences might play in the use of tense and agreement inflections by
children with LI. Although problems in nonword repetition are notorious in this population,
their effects on tense and agreement inflection use has not yet been put to a stringent test as
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the languages studied have relatively sparse inflection systems. In contrast, the verb
inflections of Hungarian make 24 different distinctions, with all but one of these involving
two or more different allomorphs. Problems in the retention of sound sequences might well
slow the development of inflections in this language. If problems of this type are playing a
role, the children’s accuracy with inflections should be related to factors such as inflection
length and nonword repetition ability.
A Sketch of Hungarian Tense and Agreement Morphology
In Hungarian, verb inflections mark tense and mode, agreement with the subject in person
and number, and agreement with the object in definiteness. (Of these dimensions,
distinctions according to mode are not examined in the present study; all inflections assessed
are in the indicative.) Although Hungarian is often referred to as an agglutinating language,
the dimensions of person and number are clearly fusional, and there is a complex
relationship between agglutinating and fusional elements. We will return to this issue after
introducing the verb inflections under investigation.
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Table 1 provides the tense and agreement inflections with their allomorphs. Table 2 shows
the tense and agreement inflections applied to the verb tol “push”.1 Inflections appear in
bold for ease of illustration. In these tables, we divide the inflections into four “paradigms”.
However, this division is primarily for illustrative purposes, as the inflections for tense,
person, number, and definiteness can be viewed as a single paradigm.
Several details can be noted from an inspection of the tables. First, Hungarian’s use of
agreement between the verb and the object (in definiteness) as well as between the subject
and the verb (in person and number) effectively doubles the size of the paradigm. The
number of inflections that must be learned by Hungarian-speaking children, then, is quite
large indeed. Verb-object agreement is typologically much less common than subject-verb
agreement. In fact, many languages show subject-verb agreement without verb-object
agreement, but the reverse does not seem to occur. Note from the tables that any difficulty
that is specific to verb-object agreement should be detectable. For example, in contexts
requiring a present first person singular form, a child might produce tolok instead of tolom
(or vice-versa).
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The indefinite conjugation is regarded as unmarked. It is used with intransitive verbs as well
as with transitive verbs with indefinite objects. It is also employed when the object is a first
or second person pronoun.2 The definite conjugation is chosen when the object Noun Phrase
(NP) is clearly marked with a definite article (a or az “the”) and when the object is a
possessively modified noun. Proper names as object NPs also take the definite conjugation.
There are additional factors that are associated with the choice of a definite or indefinite
inflection that go beyond the scope of the present study. For a more detailed description, see
Bartos (1997) and MacWhinney and Pléh (1997).
A second notable detail that is evident in Tables 1 and 2 is the relatively large number of
allomorphs. Most of the variation in the form of the inflection is a function of the vowel
harmony rules of Hungarian. These rules seem to be acquired at a rather young age by
1For ease of exposition, we use standard Hungarian orthography and do not give phonetic transcriptions. Hungarian orthography is
fairly transparent, geminates are marked by double consonants (also by doubling the first letter in a consonant digraph), and accents
above vowels mark length. However, not every accented vowel is phonetically equivalent to their short counterpart, so we present the
phonetic symbols for Hungarian vowels and non-transparent consonantal letters here. Vowels: a [ɔ], á [a:], o [o], ó [o:], u [u], ú [u:], e
[ɜ], é [e:], i [i], í [i:], ö [ø], ő [ø:], ü [y], ű [y:]; consonants: c [ʦ], cs [ʧ], dzs [ʤ], g [g], gy [ʝ], j [j], ly [j], ny [ɲ], r [r], s [∫], sz [s], ty
[ç], zs [Ʒ].
2There is also a special inflection in the indefinite conjugation when the subject is first person singular and the object is in the second
person, expressing both persons in a single inflection, as in tol-lak “I push you”.
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Hungarian-speaking children (e.g., MacWhinney, 1985), even if they render the relationship
between agreement inflections in present and past tense less clear. Other allomorphs are a
product of phonological conditioning. Chief among these is the present indefinite second
person singular allomorph, -sz, whose form is determined by the particular consonant
appearing at the end of the verb stem.
Many languages with rich inflectional paradigms do not permit bare verb stems. Hungarian
is an exception, in that the present indefinite third person singular inflection is a “zero”
form, as in tol. The existence of a finite bare stem form in Hungarian means that, in
principle, a child could employ such a form as a default whenever the appropriate inflected
form is not known or is difficult to retrieve in the moment. Finally, it can be seen in Tables 1
and 2 that there is minimal syncretism (MacWhinney & Pléh, 1997); the only neutralization
occurs in the past first person singular forms where the same inflection is used for both
definite and indefinite objects (thus, toltam is used for both “I was pushing the box” and “I
was pushing a box”)3. Hereafter, we employ the following abbreviations: “1”, “2”, and “3”
for first, second, and third person, respectively; “Sg” for singular and “Pl” for plural; “Pres”
for present and “Past” for past; and “Indef” for indefinite and “Def” for definite.
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The subject-verb agreement (for person and number) reflected in Tables 1 and 2 corresponds
to that seen in many other languages (apart from its fusion with definiteness marking).
However, Hungarian subject-verb agreement operates somewhat differently because
quantified nouns do not formally agree in number with their quantifiers. For example, ten
bottles is expressed with a singular noun tíz üveg “ten bottle” rather than a plural noun *tíz
üvegek “ten bottles”. The same is true for nouns preceded by terms corresponding to
“many”, “some” and “all”. This characteristic has implications for subject-verb agreement
because agreement is based on formal marking and not conceptual plurality. Thus a subject
such as “ten bottle” would require a verb inflected for singular.
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The relationship between agglutinating and fusional elements of the inflection system is
very complex. When (past) tense is overtly marked, this element precedes elements
reflecting person and number. Thus, in Table 2 it can be seen that in the indefinite past third
person plural, past tense -t- precedes third person plural –unk; the present tense counterpart
has no overt tense element preceding –unk. However, for inflections marked for definite,
position is less transparent. For example, whereas definite past third person plural has the
sequence –t-uk, definite present third person plural has the sequence –j-uk, with –jrepresenting an element marking definiteness, not tense. This complexity has led to
proposals (e.g., Rebrus, 2005) that the same position can serve more than one grammatical
function, depending on the particular tense, definiteness, and person and number features
involved. Phonologically conditioned allomorphy in Hungarian can also reduce the
transparency of the agglutinating elements of the inflections. For example, whereas tolom is
the form for definite present first person singular “I am pushing”, the form toltam is used for
definite past first person singular “I was pushing”, not *toltom, due to lowering of midvowels after past tense –t-.
Hungarian-Speaking Children: Previous Findings
Although no systematic experimental examination have been done thus far on the
development of agreement marking by typically developing Hungarian-speaking children,
two case studies (Lengyel, 1981, data from a boy between 1 and 3 years; Meggyes, 1971,
data from a girl between 1;8 and 2;2) and a more extensive analysis of data from 3
Hungarian children between 1;8 and 2;9 from the CHILDES database (Babarczy, 2005)
3Here we are constraining our description to the section of the verbal paradigm under investigation in our study.
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report errors in agreement or other inflection details. According to these studies, the very
first verb forms are usually either imperative forms or third person singular declarative
forms that are sometimes applied to non-third person referents. In early verb usage,
Hungarian children generally use all three singular forms together with Pl1 to express Sg1
meanings. For example, in contexts requiring tolok “I am pushing [indefinite]” a child might
produce tolok, tolsz, tol, or tolunk (see Table 2). Because these utterances usually lack a
subject, there is no overt error of subject-verb agreement in such utterances. Based on these
three studies, there seems to be individual variation in the extent children use Sg2 as a
substitute for Sg1, but for some children such errors are more common in the beginning than
Sg3 substitutions, which frequently occur with all children and for a longer period. Pl2 first
only appears in imperative forms, and even when it does appear in declarative form, it is
fairly uncommon. There are very few errors in marking Pl3 from the beginning, but these
forms are also not frequent. Past tense forms also appear towards the end of the second year,
and at first they are generally used to express completed actions.
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Babarczy (2005, 2007), in her analysis of CHILDES data from 6 Hungarian children
between 1;8 and 2;10, found many errors in definiteness agreement, revealing the children’s
preference for using the default indefinite form with a definite object (she was focusing on
imperative forms) and fewer errors in subject-verb agreement. Based on a comparative
analysis of early verb forms, she found that subject-verb agreement is delayed in English
relative to Hungarian. Interestingly, she also observes that there is no sentence length effect
on the agreement errors that young Hungarian-speaking children make. Lengyel points out
that while mixing up first and third person is common in the indefinite conjugation, it is very
rare in the definite conjugation. In summary, typically developing children first mainly use
singular forms, most often to refer to first person, and they make many errors of using Sg3,
Sg2 and Pl1 forms for Sg1 meanings. Indefinite verb forms are sometimes used in place of
definite forms.
Systematic studies of Hungarian-speaking children with LI have also been few in number.
Vinkler and Pléh (1995) reported on a child with LI who had difficulty with noun as well as
verb morphology. This child often resorted to a more frequently occurring inflection as a
substitute for the required form. Marton, Schwartz, Farkas, and Katsnelson (2006) compared
the working memory performance of Hungarian-speaking and English-speaking children
with specific language impairment. They found that, for the Hungarian-speaking children,
morphological complexity played a larger role than sentence length, whereas syntactic
complexity was the most influential factor for the English-speaking children.
Hypotheses
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Given the details of tense and agreement inflections in Hungarian, several hypotheses can be
advanced. First, according to the agreement deficit account, children with LI should be
significantly less accurate than their typically developing peers in the agreement details of
the inflections. Errors are likely to be default forms such as third person singular forms.
Tense should be correctly marked. According to the morphological richness account, the
rich inflectional morphology and null-subject character of Hungarian will lead children with
LI to make much more use of tense and agreement inflections than is the case for children
with LI in English. However, the four dimensions of tense, definiteness, person, and number
that are required in Hungarian inflections (rather than the more commonly encountered three
dimensions seen in other languages studied) will place demands on these children’s limited
processing capacity, leading to small but statistically reliable differences between children
with LI and typically developing children. When errors are observed, many should
constitute near-misses; use of a default form is not expected. If non-morphosyntactic
language processing factors such as poor retention of sound sequences are involved, errors
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not clearly attributable to the number of dimensions involved in the inflections should be
found, and the children’s use of inflections should prove to be related to factors such as the
length of the inflection and the children’s ability in nonword repetition.
Method
Participants
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Fifty children participated in the study. Twenty-five children were selected for the LI group
from two special schools for children with language impairments. All of these children met
the criteria for LI. Each child scored above 85 on the Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices
(Raven, Court, & Raven, 1987), a measure of nonverbal intelligence. All children passed a
hearing screening, and no child had a history of neurological impairment. Each child scored
at least 1.5 SDs below age norms on at least two of four language tests administered. These
four tests included two receptive tests and two expressive tests. The receptive tests were the
Hungarian standardizations of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and the Test for
Reception of Grammar (TROG). The expressive tests were the Hungarian Sentence
Repetition Test, and a nonword repetition test. The rationale for including a nonword
repetition test (described below) in the assessment battery is that the ability to repeat
nonwords has proven to be one of the most accurate means of identifying children with LI
(e.g., Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998; Tager-Flusberg & Cooper, 1999), demonstrating
excellent sensitivity and specificity, and seems to be one of the fundamental and heritable
weaknesses seen in this type of disorder (Bishop et al., 2006).
Although the PPVT (Dunn & Dunn, 1981; Csányi, 1974) was used as one of the language
tests in our selection battery, it was also used as the basis for matching participant groups, as
will be seen below. The Hungarian adaptation of the original TROG (Bishop, 1983) is being
standardized on children from 4 to 12 years of age4. Items assess the children’s
comprehension of increasingly more difficult grammatical structures. The test consists of 20
blocks, each with 4 sentences of the same construction (such as sentences with
comparatives, postmodified subjects and embedded clauses). The test has a booklet
containing 80 pages, each with 4 pictures, and on each page the child must point to the
picture that matches the sentence spoken by the experimenter. A block is considered
completed if the child responds correctly to all 4 pictures in the block. Performance is
measured in terms of number of blocks correctly completed.
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The Hungarian Sentence Repetition Test (Magyar Mondatutánmondási Teszt, MAMUT,
Kas & Lukács, in preparation) manipulates length and structural complexity independently.
Its 40 sentences are distributed evenly across 5 types of grammatical constructions: (1)
simple Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) and (2) simple OVS sentences; complex sentences
containing (3) SO subject relative clauses; (4) SO object relative clauses; and (5) OS object
relative clauses. Sentence length varies between 8 and 15 syllables within each type. The
task of the participant is to immediately and accurately repeat the sentences presented by the
experimenter. Performance is measured in terms of the number of correctly repeated
sentences, which can be evaluated based on grouping by syllable number and by
grammatical construction as well.
The nonword repetition test (Racsmány et al., 2005) requires the repetition of meaningless
but phonotactically licit strings of Hungarian phonemes. The test contains 36 nonwords
between 1 and 9 syllables in length. Each length is represented by 4 nonwords. The
4We thank Professor Dorothy Bishop for providing us with the TROG for this purpose. Thus far, 600 typically developing children
have been seen as part of the norming process; the scores for the children with LI were compared against the values obtained for the
typically developing children‥
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phonological structure of the nonwords does not reflect frequency distributions of Hungarian
phoneme sequences, but the test avoids sequences that would be articulatorily difficult for
speakers. The span of the participant is the highest syllable number for which s/he could
correctly repeat at least 2 out of the 4 nonwords.
The remaining 25 children were typically developing. These children scored above -1SD on
each of the four language tests that were administered to the children with LI. These
children were matched with the LI group on the basis of their raw scores on the PPVT.
Because the children with LI scored below age level on the PPVT, the typically developing
children matched on this measure were younger. A typically developing child was
considered a match if his or her PPVT score was within 3 points of the PPVT score of a
child in the LI group. Hereafter, this group will be referred to as the vocabulary control (VC)
group. The use of younger typically developing children matched on a non-grammatical
language measure was designed to detect whether the difficulties of the children with LI on
tense and agreement morphology exceeded their more general limitations in language. If so,
group differences favoring the VC group should be seen. Of course, differences in the two
groups’ pattern of use across the different tense and agreement morphemes was also of
interest. Means for age (in years; months) and raw scores on each of the tests together with
ranges for both groups are given in Table 3.
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Method
Given the large number of tense and agreement inflections in Hungarian, we devised a
structured method of eliciting responses that ensured multiple opportunities for the child to
produce each inflection of interest. The children were asked to repeat sentences; however,
the target inflections in each sentence were actually masked by a carefully inserted cough
that prevented the child from hearing the inflection but not the stem or the remaining
portions of the sentence. This method was adapted from Warren’s (1970) phoneme
restoration procedure. The restoration effect has been demonstrated at the morpheme level
as well, such as for affixes in Hungarian (Dankovics & Pléh, 2001), but the effect has not
yet been exploited in developmental studies as an elicited production method. Importantly,
in our study the fully audible portions of the sentence (notably, the temporal adverbial, the
person and number of the subject, and the definiteness of the object) made it clear (to a
mature speaker of Hungarian) which verb inflection was the appropriate one to use. The
child was only asked to repeat the sentences and was not told that information was missing.
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Specifically, children were instructed to repeat sentences they heard through a loudspeaker.
The sentences were recorded by a female speaker, and digitized, with coughs inserted to
replace the inflections only (see below). All sentences were normalized for a length between
8 and 14 syllables. Although the target inflections in the middle of the sentence were
replaced by a cough, the remainder of the sentence contained all the source features for
unequivocal identification of the missing inflection. Children occasionally commented that
the speaker was coughing a lot; in these cases we told them that she had a cold, and that they
should just disregard the coughs.
Six verbs were used, in both present and past tense, in both the definite and indefinite
conjugations, in both singular and plural, and in first, second, and third person. Thus, 144
sentences (6 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 = 144) were created. The sentences were blocked according to
tense and definiteness paradigm. That is, all 36 sentences marked for present definite were
presented together, as were the 36 sentences marked for present indefinite, past definite, and
past indefinite. Children were tested in at least two different sessions, with the order of the
four blocks counterbalanced across children.
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Given the vowel harmony involved in the allomorph used for the inflection, we selected
three verbs whose stems had front vowels and three that had stems with back vowels. The
six verb stems selected for the task were: tol “push”, olvas “read”, simogat “stroke” (= pet),
kerget “chase”, épít “build”, and fésül “comb”.
All sentences were simple SVO sentences. Past tense sentences were systematically longer
than present tense sentences because they contained the temporal adverbial tegnap
“yesterday”, used to make the past time of the described event clear. (Hungarian does not
possess a temporal adverbial that is unique to present tense.) The examples in (1) illustrate
the types of sentences used for each tense and definiteness combination. The location of the
inflection masked by a cough is indicated by “XXX”.
1(a)
Mi olvasXXX egy mesét
Target: olvasunk [“read” 1PlPresIndef]
“We are reading a story”
(b)
A gyerekek simogatXXX a malacot
Target: simogatják [“stroke” 3PlPresDef]
“The children are petting the pig”
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(c)
Tegnap én építXXX egy tornyot
Target: építettem [“build” 1SgPastIndef]
“Yesterday I built a tower”
(d)
Tegnap te tolXXX a biciklit
Target: toltad [“push” 2SgPastDef]
“Yesterday you pushed the bike”
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It was important to ensure that the inserted coughs were sufficient to obscure the inflection,
and that there were no anticipatory coarticulatory cues in the verb stem that might have
provided the children with an indication of the inflection that was masked. Accordingly, we
extracted the verb stem plus cough from each recorded sentence and presented them to 15
adult listeners. The listeners were asked to guess which inflection was used with the stem in
each case (for all 144 verb forms). For every item, they had to select from 24 possible forms,
and they guessed correctly on 5.6% of the items, which, as will be seen, is significantly
below the performance level for either group of children, (LI = 62%, χ2-test, p<0.001,
VC=83%, χ2-test, p<0.001). These findings indicated that our stimuli probably did not
contain unintended cues that could lead to correct performance without knowing the
appropriate inflection. In fact, the adult listeners’ guessing behavior suggested that other
factors were influencing their choices. The log frequency of allomorphs in Hungarian based
on the Hungarian Webcorpus (Halácsy et al., 2004; Kornai et al., 2006) was a significant
predictor of the frequency of the listeners’ specific choices (R2 = 0.132, beta = 0.363,
p<0.001). Not surprisingly, the items whose inflections happened to correspond to the
listeners’ most frequent choices were most likely to be guessed correctly. However, even the
inflection type that was most frequently guessed correctly was associated with only 14%
accuracy.
Scoring
Our scoring method emphasized accuracy of tense and agreement marking rather than
accuracy of the sentence as a whole. That is, we allowed for differences between the child’s
response and the stimulus sentence provided that the child’s response showed internally
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accurate agreement as well as tense marking. This scoring method was selected to reduce the
effects of recall errors and to provide as clear a view of inflection use as possible to evaluate
the agreement deficit and morphological richness accounts – two accounts expressly
developed to explain the tense and agreement inflection problems of children with LI.
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According to this scoring method, if the children used a non-target verb with correct
inflection or if the child used a different subject or object but the verb inflections were
appropriate for this change, the response was scored as correct. In addition, if a child
produced a past tense form when the stimulus sentence was in present tense (without any
other change), the child was credited with a correct response. Although in such cases it is
more customary to assume such sentences are in present tense, recall that there is no
adverbial that is unique to present tense. (To use the closest English equivalent, whereas we
must use past tense with “yesterday”, either past or present tense might be appropriate with
“today”). As Hungarian has somewhat flexible word order, variations in word order were
also permitted, provided that all of the above details were included. Using this method, the
following errors could occur: (1) person error; (2) number error; (3) tense error; (4)
definiteness error; or (5) other error, such as a sentence that bore no resemblance to the
stimulus sentence. If errors (1)-(5) or any of their combinations occurred, the answer was
scored 0. The children’s use of the wrong allomorph in otherwise-correct responses was also
noted, but not scored as an error.5 Examples of error types and deviations from the stimulus
sentence that were counted as correct are shown in Table 4.
To assess interjudge reliability, the responses of five children in each group were selected at
random and scored by an independent judge. Percentage agreement ranged from 97.2 to 100,
with similar percentages of agreement for the LI (M = 98.75) and VC (M = 99.6) groups.
Data Analysis
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The data were examined in several ways. First, we examined the children’s percentages of
correct responses for each inflection type, using a general linear model analysis of variance
(ANOVA) with Group as a between-subjects factor and Tense, Definiteness, Number, and
Person as within-subjects factors. Second, given the predictions of the morphological
richness account, we determined whether the children’s scores were related to frequency of
occurrence factors. For each inflected verb form, we calculated the following: (1) inflected
word frequency (the frequency of the exact inflected verb form); (2) inflection frequency
(e.g., the frequency of all PresDefSg3 allomorphs combined); and (3) allomorph frequency
(mostly conditioned by stem category for vowel harmony, e.g., the frequency of the –ja
allomorph of PresDefSg3). The source of frequency data was the Hungarian Webcorpus
(Halácsy et al., 2004; Kornai et al., 2006). Calculations employed the logarithm of
frequency. Finally, we performed an analysis of the children’s errors.
Results
Accuracy According to Group and Inflection Type
The ANOVA on accuracy revealed Group as a significant main effect, F (1,48) = 10.02,
η2=0.173, p < 0.01. With the exception of Definiteness, F (1,48) = 0.09, n.s., all withinsubjects factors proved to be significant main effects: Tense, F (1,48) = 13.91, η2=0.225, p <
0.01, Number, F (1,48) = 8.91, η2=0.157, p < 0.01, and Person, F (1,48) = 27.19, η2=0.362,
p < 0.001. The significant interactions were Tense × Definiteness × Person, F (2,96) = 7.22,
5We also used a second scoring method which was more stringent. This method required that the target verb (in correctly inflected
form) be used in the child–s response, and no changes were allowed in the person and number of the subject or the definiteness of the
object. The pattern of results seen for this scoring method matched those seen for our first scoring method, except that the group
effects were even stronger.
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η2=0.131, p < 0.01, Number × Person, F (2,96) = 10.05, η2=0.180, p < 0.001, Definiteness ×
Number × Person, F (2,96) = 8.85, η2=0.156, p < 0.001, and Tense × Definiteness ×
Number × Person, F (2,96) = 4.81, η2=0.156, p < 0.05. Pairwise comparisons (LSD tests) at
the 0.05 level revealed that Past, Plural and 2nd Person were significantly more difficult
than Present, Singular and 1st and 3rd Person, respectively (1st and 3rd Person did not
differ). Figure 1 provides an illustration of the findings.
It can be seen that overall performance of the LI group was significantly lower than that of
the VC group, but no interactions with Group were significant, suggesting that the two
groups basically showed the same pattern of performance across the dimensions examined.
The interactions involving Person and Number were due to low scores of 2nd person and,
especially, of Pl2 forms. These difficulties are evident from Figure 1.
Relationship with Frequency
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We examined the relationship between several frequency factors and the children’s use of
the tense and agreement inflections. According to the morphological richness account,
children should have greater success producing more frequently occurring inflections than
less frequently occurring inflections. However, it is also true that other details, such as the
frequency of the words themselves could also influence the children’s success. To determine
if these factors could predict performance on the experimental task, we included them in
stepwise regression analyses. We tested the effects of log inflected word frequency, log
inflection frequency, and log allomorph frequency on the number of correct responses,
separately for the LI and VC groups. Only variables that showed a significant correlation (p
< 0.05) with the target variable were entered into the analysis.
For both groups, the factor that best contributed to predicting performance levels was log
inflection frequency. As can be seen in Table 5, the LI data are somewhat better predicted
by this factor, where it explains 31% of variance, as opposed to 20% explained in the VC
group.
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Error analysis—Both groups of children produced many errors on the task. Out of the
3600 responses from each group, the VC group produced 371 errors (10.03%), and the LI
group erred on 905 (25.13%) responses. It is notable that the number of inappropriate
productions of the present third person singular indefinite – the zero-marked form – was not
especially high, suggesting that this form was not used as a default. This zero-marked form
constituted only 6.8% of the errors in the VC group, and 5.2% of the errors in the LI group.
Inappropriate productions of these zero-marked forms were outnumbered by the
inappropriate production of inflected forms. For example, the incorrect production of present
third person singular definite forms represented 8.2% of the errors for each group, and
inappropriate productions of present first person plural definite forms constituted 9.4% of
the errors for the VC group and 13% of the errors for the LI group.
Figure 2 provides the mean number of errors, according to error type. Numbers for each
error type represent errors that constituted an error only on that single dimension. Along
with the responses treated as errors in the preceding analyses, we include in Figure 2 nontarget responses that were scored as correct in those analyses, namely, the use of a nontarget
verb with correct tense and agreement (NTV), the use of a nontarget subject or object with
correct agreement (NTS/O), and the use of an incorrect allomorph (Allmor) even though
agreement was correct. Figure 2 illustrates several group differences, but not all of them are
confirmed by statistical analysis. The LI group made more single-dimension errors overall,
F (1, 49) = 9.2, η2 = 0.21, p < 0.01. ANOVAs were also performed for each error type
separately. The difference reached significance for Person, F (1, 49) = 8.8, η2 = 0.155, p <
0.01, and Definiteness, F (1, 49) = 4.16, η2 = 0.08, p < 0.05, but not for Number, F (1, 49) =
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1.6, n.s., or Tense, F (1, 49) = 2.68, n.s. More detailed comparison of dimension errors
across groups shows that, among person errors, the LI group only made significantly more
errors than VC children in using 3rd person forms, F (1, 49) = 8.75, η2 = 0.154, p < 0.01. In
definiteness errors, the difference was only significant with using indefinite forms when the
target was definite, F (1, 49) = 7.98, η2 = 0.143, p < 0.01. The remaining response type
treated as an error in the earlier analyses, Other, also revealed a difference between the two
groups of children, F (1, 49) = 4.93, η2 = 0.093, p< 0.05. None of the deviations from the
target originally scored as correct showed a group difference, such as NTV, F (1, 49) = 1.97,
n.s., and NTS/O, F (1, 49) = 2.34, n.s. Finally, although use of the wrong allomorph
(Allmor) was not considered an error, it can be seen from Figure 2 that the two groups were
highly similar in this regard, suggesting that rules of vowel harmony were well established
and did not seem to be an area of particular difficulty for the LI group. An inspection of
Figure 2 reveals that, although the children with LI made a greater number of errors than the
VC children, the pattern of errors across error types was highly similar in the two groups.
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The morphological richness account predicts that single-dimension or “near-miss” errors
will be especially frequent. To test this prediction, we compared the children’s near-miss
errors to productions that constituted an error on more than one dimension (e.g., an error of
tense plus number). A repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant effect of Group, F
(1, 48) = 10.07, η2 = 0.17, p < 0.01, but no difference according to near-miss versus
multiple-dimension error, F (1, 48) = 1.02, n.s., and no interaction F (1, 48) = 0.001, n.s. For
the VC group, the mean number of near-miss and multiple-diminsion errors was 10.76 (SD
= 8.20) and 8.00 (SD = 12.35), respectively. For the LI group, the corresponding means
were 22.28 (SD = 13.80) and 19.72 (SD = 24.63), respectively. The prediction of the
morphological richness account of a predominance of near-miss errors was not borne out.
Non-Morphosyntactic Language Processing Factors
The agreement deficit account and the morphological richness account predict difficulties
according to the nature of the dimension involved (e.g., agreement) or the number of
dimensions involved (e.g., four) in the inflections. However, if the children’s use of
inflections is also influenced by factors pertaining to the retention of sound sequences,
factors other than the specific nature or number of dimensions involved should be
observable. One such factor is the length of the verb plus inflection, measured in number of
phonemes. Accordingly, we determined whether length in number of phonemes could serve
as a significant predictor of the children’s accuracy of inflection use. This proved true for
each group. For the VC group, this factor accounted for 20% of the variance in the
children’s inflection accuracy scores (beta = 0.45, p < .001, R2 = 0.20); for the LI group,
31% of the variance was explained by this factor (beta = 0.55, p < .001, R2 = 0.31).
NIH-PA Author Manuscript
Recall, however, that log inflection frequency also proved to be a predictor of the children’s
accuracy of inflection use. Some of inflections that were relatively low in frequency such as
the second person plural inflections (e.g., játok, tatok) are also among the longest
inflections. Therefore, we performed a regression analysis to determine if length in
phonemes contributed to the prediction of the children’s inflection accuracy even when log
inflection frequency is taken into account. The results appear in Table 6. As can be seen, for
each group, length in number of phonemes proved significantly related to the children’s
inflection accuracy along with log inflection frequency; together these factors explained
27% of the variance in the VC data and 41% of the variance in the LI data.
The data in Table 6 address the degree to which length of the verbs with inflections related
to the children’s inflection accuracy, but this factor cannot be divorced from the dimensions
(e.g., person, number) reflected in the inflections. To gain an impression of the role of length
independent of tense and agreement, we used the children’s scores on the nonword
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repetition test as a covariate and again compared the VC and LI groups. Although low (LI
group) or age-appropriate (VC group) nonword repetition test scores constituted one of the
bases on which the children were selected, the typically developing comparison group (mean
age = 7;1) was on average more than two years younger than the LI group (mean age =
9;10). Nevertheless, the two groups differed on this measure (LI M = 3.5, SD = 1.5; VC M =
5.8, SD = 1.3, t (48) = 6.14, p < 0.001. When nonword repetition was entered as a covariate,
the group difference in inflection accuracy disappeared, F (1,47) = 0.68, n.s.. The effect of
nonword repetition was significant, F (1,47) = 4.75, η2=0.096, p < 0.05. These findings
suggest that factors such as ability to retain sequences of sounds may have had a bearing on
the children’s use of inflections on our experimental task.
Discussion
In this study, we found that a group of Hungarian-speaking children with LI performed
significantly below the level of younger VC children in a task in which the children had to
repeat sentences and supply the appropriate tense and agreement inflections. Although the
two groups differed in accuracy, their patterns of performance across inflection types – both
in terms of inflections with greatest and least accuracy and in terms of error types – were
highly similar. Before discussing the implications of these findings, we discuss some
potential limitations of the study.
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One potential limitation is that we cannot be certain that our task yielded results that were
representative of the children’s actual abilities. Studies of children with LI in other
languages have typically employed spontaneous speech samples and/or sentence completion
tasks. We believe our choice of tasks was highly appropriate given the characteristics of
Hungarian. For example, the distinction between agreement inflections as a function of the
definiteness of the object is not one that can be easily manipulated through sentence
completion tasks. Despite the novel nature of our task, the higher scores by the younger
group of TD children compared to the children with LI suggest that it was developmentally
appropriate.
NIH-PA Author Manuscript
Another potential limitation is our use of younger TD children matched with the LI group
according to receptive vocabulary rather than according to an expressive measure such as
MLU. However, for a language with a rich morphology such as Hungarian, MLU matching
would carry the risk of matching two groups on the very ability that we were wishing to
compare. Nevertheless, matching on the basis of receptive vocabulary was a more stringent
test of the status of tense and agreement morphology in Hungarian LI than would be the case
if chronological age controls had been used. As can be seen in Table 3, the children with LI
were nearly three years older than the VC children, yet they did not perform as well as these
younger typically developing children.
Another potential criticism of the study is that given our use of a nonword repetition test and
a sentence repetition test as two of the four tests in our diagnostic battery, it might be argued
that we selected only or primarily those children with LI with limitations in working
memory. However, all of the children with LI earned low scores on the PPVT – a receptive
vocabulary measure that seems to place fewer working memory demands on the children
than all of our other measures. In addition, the children’s enrollment in special schools for
children with language impairments required a diagnosis made by professionals prior to the
children’s participation in this study. Thus, although these children may have had limitations
in working memory, they were not clearly different from the more general population of
children with LI in having working memory limitations along with problems with language
itself.
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Hungarian is a language with agreement required between both the subject and the verb and
between the verb and the object. According to the agreement deficit account, children with
LI should have more difficulty than their TD peers in the marking of agreement. To evaluate
the predictions of this account, it is important to examine the children’s accuracy with regard
to tense separately from their accuracy with regard to agreement. As can be seen in Figure 2,
the children with LI made a greater number of tense errors than the VC children, but this
difference did not achieve statistical significance. As would be predicted by this account,
agreement errors were clearly evident in the responses of the LI group. Yet, the group
difference for number errors was not significant. These errors were relatively infrequent by
the LI group. Furthermore, considering that 24 different inflections were required in our
task, all involving agreement, the LI group’s mean percentage of correct use of 60%
suggests that these children were clearly not producing inflections at random. Furthermore,
these children were not relying on a default form when responding to the items. These
findings suggest that if the agreement deficit account is generally correct, provisions must be
made in the account to explain how children with LI can use all person, number, and
definiteness forms with some degree of accuracy, and not differ from VC children in the use
of number. In addition, the agreement deficit account provides no reason for the special
difficulty with Pl2 forms experienced by the children with LI.
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Hungarian differs from languages with a rich inflectional morphology such as Italian and
Spanish in that distinctions in four dimensions – tense, person, number, and definiteness –
are required rather than the distinctions in three dimensions required in these other
languages. According to the morphological richness account, rich inflectional morphology is
beneficial to children with LI up to a point; however, four dimensions have been proposed
as the number of dimensions that begin to tax these children’s limited capacities. For this
reason, Hungarian-speaking children with LI are expected to perform below the level of
typically developing peers even though their levels of inflection use should be considerably
higher than the levels reported for children acquiring English.
The findings were in keeping with this prediction. Furthermore, this account predicts that the
inflections with the greatest likelihood of accuracy in the speech of children with LI will be
those of higher frequency of occurrence. Our results were also consistent with this
expectation. However, the morphological richness account also predicts that the great
majority of errors will take the form of near misses. Although such errors were common,
they did not exceed the number of errors on multiple dimensions. This finding runs counter
to the assumptions of this account.
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It seems quite possible that the morphological richness account is too simplistic in its
assumption that the number of dimensions reflected in an inflection is the chief contributor
to processing demands in a language with a rich inflection system such as Hungarian. For
example, in an application of the Competition Model to Hungarian, MacWhinney and Pléh
(1997) noted that adults’ interpretations of sentences relied less on definiteness agreement
between the verb and the object than on other cues. These investigators suggested that
definiteness agreement in Hungarian has relatively low “contrast availability.” That is,
because in Hungarian both the subject and the object may be definite, or both may be
indefinite, definiteness is often non-contrastive and as a result adults seem to depend less on
this type of cue than on other types of cues. It is possible that factors such as contrast
availability influence production as well, and perhaps especially so in the case of children
with LI. As a case in point, we noted that children with LI produced a greater number of
definiteness errors as well as number errors than the VC group but did not differ from the
VC group in committing errors involving number. Both definiteness and number require
agreement, both have contrasts of two features (definite versus indefinite, singular versus
plural), and both were crossed with tense and person distinctions in the same way in the
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sentence stimuli. Therefore the fact that the LI and VC groups differed in the number of
errors on one of these dimensions and not the other suggests that factors beyond the number
of dimensions are probably relevant. Future research, such as an application of the
Competition Model to the study of inflection use in children with LI might prove quite
informative in this regard.
Along with their well documented problems in the area of morphosyntax, children with LI
often have considerable difficulty retaining sequences of sounds, as measured by tasks such
as nonword repetition (see Graf Estes, Evans, & Else-Quest, 2007 for a recent metaanalysis). Although these two deficits are separable (Bishop et al., 2006), many children
with LI have both of these deficits. An assumption of the present study is that in a language
with a multitude of inflections and allomorphic variations such as Hungarian, children’s
ability to retain sequences of sounds may have a greater influence on their ability to learn
the inflection system than is seen in a language such as English.
Our findings seem consistent with this assumption. The length of the verb with inflection
proved related to the children’s inflection accuracy even when log inflection frequency was
taken into account. More importantly, the very clear differences between the two groups in
inflection accuracy were no longer evident when the children’s nonword repetition scores
were used as a covariate.
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Collectively, our findings lend support to the notion that processing-related factors play a
role in the inflection limitations of children with LI in a language such as Hungarian.
However, it is likely that we have not identified all of the factors related to processing that
were at play in this study. Earlier we noted that factors considered in the Competition Model
such as contrast availability may prove important. In addition, other types of processing
factors might be identified. For example, the children sometimes changed the verb or a
subject or object in the stimulus sentence. It is true that even when such changes were
allowed (provided that the verb inflection was correct) group differences favoring the VC
children were seen in inflection accuracy. Nevertheless, it seems important to determine
why such substitutions of verbs, subjects, and objects were relatively frequent in the data.
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In summary, the findings of this investigation indicate that models assuming processing
limitations on the part of children with LI are more compatible with the pattern of verb
inflection use seen in Hungarian-speaking children with LI than are accounts based on an
assumption of deficits specific to agreement. One processing-related approach, the
morphological richness account, seems to predict a substantial portion of the findings, but
falls short in that it predicts a greater proportion of near-miss errors than we actually
observed. Non-morphosyntactic language processing factors such as the retention of
sequences of sounds may well account for additional details in the findings. We suspect that
this factor may play a larger than usual role in a language laden with inflections such as
Hungarian. Yet, it seems likely that other factors will prove important as well. Additional
research is clearly warranted.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Anna Babarczy, Huba Bartos and Péter Rebrus for their valuable help and suggestions on
the manuscript. This research was supported by research grant R01 DC00458 from the National Institute on
Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health (USA) to Laurence B. Leonard and by
OTKA TS 049840 from the Hungarian National Science Foundation to Csaba Pléh. Ágnes Lukács was a grantee of
the Bolyai János Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Science. Portions of this study were presented
at the meeting of the European Child Language Disorders Group in Cork, Ireland. We are grateful to the children in
Simon Antal Primary School in Vác and in the Dr. Nagy László Institute of Special Education in Kőszeg for their
participation. We also thank the speech therapists in both institutions for their help with screening and organization.
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Figure 1.
Mean percentage correct for each inflection type for the LI and VC groups. Standard errors
are also shown.
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Figure 2.
Mean number of errors on different error types in the two groups. Only errors in a single
dimension are counted. Standard errors are also shown.
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Table 1
Present
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Past
Definite
(e.g., Én tolom a biciklit
“I am pushing the bycicle”)
Indefinite
(e.g., Én tolok egy dobozt
“I am pushing a bycicle”)
Singular
Plural
Singular
Plural
1st
-om/em/öm
-juk/jük
-ok/ek/ök
-unk/ünk
2nd
-od/ed/öd
-játok/itek
-sz/ol/el/öl
-tok/tek/tök
3rd
-ja/i
-ják/ik
0
-nak/nek
1st
-tam/tem
-tuk/tük
-tam/tem
-tunk/tünk
2nd
-tad/ted
-tátok/tétek
-tál/tél
-tatok/tetek
3rd
-ta/te
-ták/ték
-t/ott/ett/ött
-tak/tek
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Inflections and their allomorphs for the four paradigms tested in the study
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Table 2
Present
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Past
Definite
(e.g., Én tolom a dobozt
“I am pushing the box”)
Indefinite
(e.g., Én tolok egy dobozt
“I am pushing a box”)
Singular
Plural
Singular
Plural
1st
Tolom
Toljuk
tolok
Tolunk
2nd
Tolod
Toljátok
tolsz
Toltok
3rd
Tolja
Tolják
tol
Tolnak
1st
Toltam
Toltuk
toltam
Toltunk
2nd
Toltad
Toltátok
toltál
Toltatok
3rd
Tolta
Tolták
tolt
Toltak
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Inflected forms for tol “push” in the four paradigms tested in the study
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Table 3
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Means and ranges (in parentheses) for the LI and VC groups for age in years; months and in raw scores on the
PPVT, the TROG, the Nonword Repetition, and the Sentence Repetition tests.
LI
VC
Age
9;10 (7;6–11;10)
7;1 (5;2–8;5)
PPVT
91.3 (61–114)
92.1 (62–115)
TROG (blocks correct)
12.3 (8–18)
13.76 (6–20)
Nonword repetition
3.5 (1–5)
5.8 (3–8)
Sentence repetition
22.0 (0– 39)
33.6 (18–40)
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Table 4
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Examples of different types of errors or deviations from the target sentence for the stimulus sentence Tegnap ti
fésültétek az oroszlánt “Yesterday you (Pl) were combing (comb PastDefPl2) the lion”
Response type
Child’s response
Translation
Person Error
Tegnap ti fésültük az oroszlánt
Yesterday you (Pl) were combing (PastDefPl1) the lion
Number Error
Tegnap ti fésülted az oroszlánt
Yesterday you (Pl) were combing (PastDefSg2) the lion
Tense Error
Tegnap ti fésülitek az oroszlánt.
Yesterday you (Pl) are combing (PresDefPl2) the lion
Definiteness Error
Tegnap ti fésültetek az oroszlánt.
Yesterday you (Pl) were combing (PastIndefPl2) a lion.
Nontarget verb with correct
agreement
Tegnap ti fésülködtétek az oroszlánt.
Yesterday you (Pl) were combing (reflexive, PastDefPl2) the
lion.
Nontarget subject or object with
correct agreement
Tegnap ti fésültetek egy oroszlánt.
Yesterday you (Pl) were combing (PastIndefPl2) a lion.
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Table 5
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Log inflection frequency as a predictor of the performance of the LI and VC groups. R2 shows the amount of
variance in the data explained by the predictor.
Beta
Sig
R2
VC
Log inflection frequency
0.45
<0.001
0.20
LI
Log inflection frequency
0.56
<0.001
0.31
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Table 6
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Length in number of phonemes and log inflection frequency as predictors of the performance of the LI and VC
groups. R2 shows the amount of variance in the data explained by the predictor.
Beta
Sig
R2
−0.32
<0.001
0.27
VC model
Number of phonemes
Log inflection frequency
0.28
<0.01
LI model
Log inflection frequency
0.38
<0.001
Number of phonemes
−0.36
<0.001
0.41
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