Early verbal categories and inflections in children who use speech-generating devices

Abstract

The use of early verbal categories, their event types, and the emergence of verbal inflections (-ing, -s, and -ed) were analyzed in data from four participants with motor speech disorders aged 9;5–13;9 (years;months) who used speech-generating devices to converse with a familiar adult. The study was conducted through a secondary analysis of a corpus of data collected as part of another study. It documents the production of verbs and the emergence of verb inflections in natural conversations between each of the participants and a member of their educational team over a period of up to 10 months. All participants used both action and state verbs, although action verbs were dominant. The emergence of the inflections -ing, -s, and -ed varied and were distributed selectively with different verb categories and event types. The results are discussed in terms of language development and are considered in terms of the findings from research with children without disabilities, which suggest that action verbs precede state verbs, and inflections are primarily acquired based on their correspondence to the verbal category (action–state). Implications for theory, practice, and further research are discussed.