The relevance of specific language impairment in understanding the role of transfer in second language acquisition
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) are a useful first language (L1) comparison group for second language (L2) children in order to determine whether target-deviant structures in interlanguage are developmental or due to transfer from the L1. Children with SLI could make a useful comparison group for child L2 learners because, unlike very young L1 learners, children with SLI have both incomplete abilities in the target language and the same cognitive and mental maturity as their age mates acquiring an L2. We examined the use of direct object clitics by English-L1/French-L2 learners and monolingual French-speaking children with SLI. Transfer from English might be expected for object pronominalization in French L2 interlanguage because the two languages have contrastive systems for this aspect of grammar. The use of direct object clitics in contexts in spontaneous speech where object pronominalization would be permissible was examined. The results showed that both the L2 and SLI children supplied clitics in permissible contexts at the same rate (approximately 40%), which was lower than that of monolingual, normally developing French-speaking children who were either age-matched (7 years old) or language-matched according to mean length of utterance in words (3 years old) with the L2–SLI children. Although there appeared to be some role of L1 transfer in the relative distribution of nonclitic object types in clitic-permissible contexts, the similarities between the SLI and L2 children suggest that target-deviant structures involving direct object pronominalization are a developmental phenomenon in child French across learner contexts. The results also suggest that for acquisition of some target-deviant structures, there can be greater similarities between L2 and SLI children than between L2 and younger L1 children.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".