Abstract：
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) has been explained as either a deficit deriving from an abstract representational deficit or as emerging from difficulties in acquiring and coordinating multiple interacting cues guiding learning. These competing explanations are often difficult to decide between when tested on European languages. This paper reports an experimental study of relative clause (RC) production in Cantonese-speaking children with and without DLD, which enabled us to test multiple developmental predictions derived from one prominent theory - emergentism. Children with DLD (N = 22; aged 6;6-9;7) were compared with age-matched typically-developing peers (N = 23) and language-matched, typically-developing children (N = 21; aged 4;7-7;6) on a sentence repetition task. Results showed that children\'s production across multiple RC types was influenced by structural frequency, general semantic complexity, and the linear order of constituents, with the DLD group performing worse than their age-matched and language-matched peers. The results are consistent with the emergentist explanation of DLD.
摘要：
发展性语言障碍（DLD）已被解释为由于抽象的代表性缺陷而产生的缺陷，或者由于在获取和协调指导学习的多种相互作用线索方面的困难而出现的缺陷。在对欧洲语言进行测试时，这些相互竞争的解释通常很难在两者之间做出决定。本文报道了在有和没有DLD的广东话儿童中产生相对条款（RC）的实验研究，这使我们能够检验从一个突出的理论-紧急主义中得出的多种发展预测。将患有DLD的儿童（N=22;6岁;6-9岁;7）与年龄匹配的典型发育同龄人（N=23）和语言匹配的儿童进行比较，执行句子重复任务的典型发育儿童（N=21；4岁；7-7岁；6）。结果表明，跨多个RC类型的儿童生产受结构频率的影响，一般语义复杂性，和成分的线性顺序，DLD组的表现比年龄匹配和语言匹配的同龄人差。结果与DLD的紧急解释一致。
