Teaching subjecthood to language-disordered children.

Abstract

Four language-disordered children who had not learned subject properties such as agreement morphemes, nominative case, and question inversion were taught the function of subjects in sentences. After learning subject function, the children learned the subject properties without assistance. The findings suggest that subject properties can be taught as a unit and their acquisition follows the two-step pattern that is predicted by the functional theory of language. The findings suggest that the functional theory has diagnostic and treatment implications for clinical work with language-disordered children.