Los verbos en niños con trastorno del lenguaje

Abstract

This paper deals with the verb use of children with LI (Language Impairment) of 5 years of age under rehabilitation. The study focuses on the semantic and syntactic characteristics of the verbs and arguments used and also their mental representation in order to know if there is a major or minor semantic or grammatical vulnerability. It is argued that difficulties may lay in the verb use and unfolding following their formal characteristics but also influenced by its conceptual features and activity representation. The data consist on the verbs employed by 4 children with LI of 4 (4;11) years and their controls. The analysis has been done according to semantic categories and the correspondent argument structure. The results show a pattern of production that differs among LI and Controls: Verb and argument structure poverty, is associated with omission errors, together with the tendency to prefer the most simple verbs, both in semantic structure and argument structure. It is suggested that the verb representations are not well organized and centered in the activity itself or related to the Agent, instead of the action development, their consequences or goal. These results are discussed in function of the difficulties in the verb transformations and mental representation of them. Finally it is commented the relevance of these data in order to ask for better activity analysis and linguistic formulations in the course of the therapy with LI children