The acquisition of past tense by Greek-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment

The performance of 13 Greek-speaking children with Specific LanguageImpairment (SLI) on past tense formation is compared to the performance oftwo control groups of typically developing (TD) children. It is shown that childrenwith SLI have difficulties in the production of past tense forms comparedto language or age-matched TD controls. It is argued that phonological salienceor regularity does not affect the acquisition of past tense in children with SLIand TD controls. In contrast, regularity of aspectual formation and frequency ofthe verb form has an effect on the acquisition of the perfective past in childrenwith SLI. Τhese results are discussed in relation to one morphosyntactic andone morphophonological account of past tense acquisition in SLI.