LINGUISTIC AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE PRODUCTION IN 4-6-YEAR-OLD GEORGIAN-SPEAKING CHILDREN WITH TYPICAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND SPECIFIC LANGUAGE DISORDER

Abstract

The present study aimed at conducting the neuropsychological and linguistic analysis of expressive lan- guage disorder in the population of Georgian-speaking children. 4-6-year-old children with expressive  language disorder and typical language development participated in the study (40 participants in total).   The child’s speech was assessed through formal testing and free play in informal situations.  The comparison of the two groups showed that the children with typical language development signifi- cantly differ from the group with language disorder by articulation (t (38) = - 4,65, p<0,001), phono- logical (t (38) = - 2,48, p<0,05), and syntactic errors (t (38) = - 3,67), length of utterance (t (38) = 3,62,  p=0,001), and the total number of errors (t (38) =- 5,36, p<0,001). The above data lead to the following  conclusion: Georgian-speaking children with expressive language disorder mostly make phonological,  syntactic and articulation errors. They also find difficult to construct complex sentences. The comparison  of the two groups did not reveal qualitative differences.  Both groups made the same type of mistakes.  The only difference was the total number of errors.  Regression analysis showed that the length of utterance and the total production can only predict the type  of errors in average population.The interpretation of  the  research results  leads to four  general conclusions: 1. Expressive language  disorder  is not  atypical  language  development  disorder and only implies prolonged  language acqui- sition; 2. The deficiency profile manifested in the case of expressive language disorder depends on a  concrete language  and the requirements imposed on the child by this language; 3. Phonetic,  articulation,  syntactic errors and short sentences are mostly typical of Georgian-speaking children with expressive  language disorder; 4.  According to Levelt’s  cognitive model, the stage of grammatical and phonological  encoding and the stage of articulation of phonetic plan are the deficient links in the population of Geor- gian-speaking children.