A third component is to know how tense marking is expressed phonologically, whether in regular patterns such as “walk/walked” or irregular patterns such as “run/ran” or “fall/fell.” Children with SLI show they understand the concept of past tense by using words such as “yesterday,” yet they sometimes omit the past tense markings required by the grammar, in sentences such as “Patsy _ not like cake” and “yesterday Patsy like_ cake.” Young typically developing children sometimes over-generalize regular past tense morphology, as in “walked,” to irregular forms to generate “runned” instead of “ran” or “falled” instead of “fell.” Children with SLI persist in omitting tense markers for years beyond the time when typically developing children use these forms consistently, as required in the adult grammar. This requirement is referred to as “finiteness” of clauses, i.e., a finite clause has a place in the sentence that must have a tense marker, even if it requires inserting “do” which does not contribute content meaning.
Tense marking has several components: One component is the cognitive recognition of tense to mark time, shown in examples such as “Patsy likes cookies” versus “Patsy liked cookies.” A second component is the requirement to provide tense marking in sentences where required, such as “Mary did not eat cake” instead of “Mary _ not eat cake” where “did” or “does” is required to mark past tense (either present or past). A hallmark characteristic of children with SLI is a protracted delay in acquiring requirements for tense marking in English and related languages. Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is a language impairment that delays the mastery of language in children who have no hearing loss or other developmental delays 1,2. Professor Mabel Rice of the University of Kansas discusses some details Teaching children with Specific Language Impairment can be challenging.
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