Referential Choices and Specific Language Impairment: Sensitivity to Contrast Levels and Grammatical Role

Speakers’ referential choices differ in the degree of explicitness, ranging from very explicit expressions (such as lexical NPs, e.g., the boy) to less explicit expressions (such as pronouns, e.g., he, and null elements). We examine the referential choices of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), in order to differentiate between the linguistic and pragmatic abilities involved in the selection of appropriate referring expressions. Existing findings on referential choices by children with SLI are currently inconsistent and have mainly been reported based on narratives. We used an elicited production task to manipulate the referent’s accessibility by means of two factors: (a) contexts that instantiate different levels of contrast (one vs. two contrasts) and (b) the grammatical role of the expression (subject vs. object). We show that children with SLI and typically developing controls produce more explicit expressions for increased contrast levels and for objects than for subjects. Although children with SLI modify the explicitness of their referring expressions according to the accessibility of referents as typically developing children do, we also find varying production rates between the groups. We discuss how these differences in production rates surface as a consequence of language impairment, although the explicitness of referential choices remains otherwise largely unaffected.