Serial verb construction in Cantonese-speaking preschool children with and without language impairment

Abstract

Serial verb construction (SVC) is very productive in Cantonese and it develops actively in the preschool years. Little is known about the development of SVC of children with language impairment (LI). Forty-four kindergarten children with and without LI, aged between 4 to 6 years, participated in the study. This study made use of a video description task to examine the developmental and error patterns of five subtypes of SVC, which were directional, instrumental, benefactive, purpose and dative SVC. The performance of the typically developing 5-year-old group was significantly better than the typically developing 4-year-old group. Over 94% of children at 4 years of age showed emergence of all subtypes of SVC. However, the orders of mastery of different subtypes of SVC between the two age groups were not the same. Children with LI produced fewer accurate SVC than their typically developing age-matched peers. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the error patterns were also reported.