Specific language impairment in the speech of Meshack, an Ekegusii speaker

Abstract

Research on SLI, mostly on European languages like English, German and Italian, has suggested that it mainly affects inflectional morphology and, to a lesser degree, syntax and phonology. The present study researched SLI in Ekegusii, an African language which, unlike those three, is a tone language. The study found that the impairment in the case studied significantly affected not only inflectional (essentially verbal) morphology, but also phonology, especially tones. It found much fewer instances of lexical and syntactic impairment.