The use of the article by spanish–speaking children with language impairment

Spanish-speaking children with Typical Language Development (TLD) and children with Language Impairment (LI) still commit semantic and pragmatic errors in their school years generating article omissions and substitutions. Definite articles seem to be vulnerable, despite the methodological variability, sociocultural and linguistic differences, among previous research. Forty-five monolingual Spanish-speakers living in Mexico between 4;0 and 8;0 participated: 1) 15 children with LI; 2) 15 children with TLD matched by age; 3) 15 children with TLD matched by language level with the first group. The experimental task consisted in the presentation of toys organized by semantic groups and accompanied by questions that elicit definite and indefinite articles, and bare nouns. Children with LI used significantly less definite articles and less semantic functions (roles and generic nouns) than the TLD groups. No significant differences were found in part-whole and common functions. Indefinites and bare nouns were used in the same proportion. It is explained that some abstract semantic functions carry an additional difficulty, in contrast with functions that are related to concrete entities. This study contributes to the understanding of patterns of article usage for their further inclusion in new tools that identify SLI.