Morphological and phonological errors in the written language production of children with DLD

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present study aims to investigate the written language production in Greek of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) children and compare it to that of typically developing (TD) children matched for gender and chronological age. The participants of the study were 31 children with DLD (7.6 years old) and 31 TD children (7.7 years old). All the participants were asked to write a text on a specific prompt they were given by the researchers. Both groups were assessed for the total number of words produced in text, the proportion of incorrectly spelt words in text, the total number of morphological errors and the total number of phonological errors produced. In addition, the specific type of morphological and phonological errors students produced in their written texts of the DLD group were also taken into consideration. The findings of the study showed that the DLD group performed worse in almost all measurements as compared to their TD peers and that their errors concerned mainly replacement, omission or addition of graphemes or syllables. Further research is needed on the written production of individuals with DLD in order to replicate those findings and contribute to the almost non-existing knowledge concerning written production in Greek.