Dative and Locative
Constructions in Children
with Specific Language
Impairment
Vanessa Harwood, Dana Arthur, & Bernard Grela
Department of Communication Sciences
University of Connecticut
Specific Language Impairment
A diagnosis of exclusionary criteria which includes:
 - 1.25 standard deviations or lower on
standardized language assessment
 Non-verbal IQ is within normal limits
 Normal hearing acuity
 No oral structure or motor abnormalities
 No neurological, behavioral, or psycho-social
deficits
Language Characteristics of SLI
(Leonard, 1998)
 Trends in the literature report both expressive and
receptive deficits for children with SLI.
 Expressive deficits are reported with closed class
morphemes including
- tense markers (e.g., auxiliary verbs, past
tense, third person singular)
- non-tense markers (e.g., plural,
possessives).
Prepositions & SLI
(Watkins & Rice, 1998)
 Children with SLI show difficulties with production
of verb particle constructions;
however, prepositional phrase use was
commensurate with typically developing age
matched peers.
Verb Particles
Prepositional Phrases
Precede or follow NP:
Precede NP only:
Kick over the fence
Jump over the fence
Kick the fence over
*Jump the fence over
Grela, Rashiti, & Soares (2004)
 Children with SLI made numerous errors when
producing sentences requiring prepositional
phrases in comparison to typically developing
peers.
 Errors in selecting dative prepositions.
e.g., * The boy is giving the ball at the witch.
 May indicate a difficulty linking the semantics of
prepositions and verbs
Dative and Locative Constructions
The preposition “to” has both dative and locative
syntactic and semantic functions
Locative
 Syntactic: optional adverbial
 Semantic: indicates place or location
e.g., The horse walked to the barn.
Dative and Locative Constructions
Dative
 Syntactic: 1) optional preposition “to” case
marks adverbial or 2) double object form
 Semantic: transfer of possession
1. John gave the book to Mary.
2. John gave Mary the book.
Study Aim
 To investigate the use of the preposition “to” in
both its dative and locative forms in children with
SLI and compare their performance to typically
developing children matched for language (LA)
and age (CA).
Predictions
Since prepositions are closed class morphemes:
 Children with SLI will produce fewer prepositional
phrases overall than the language matched (LM)
and age matched (AM) groups.
 Children with SLI will perform below AM and LM
controls in their use of target prepositions in both
the dative and locative forms.
 Children with SLI will demonstrate greater difficulty
in the production of the dative construction when
compared to the locative.
Participants
 10 SLI, Age 4;7-6;11 (m=6.07, sd=0.73)
 Language Score (m=74.1, sd=19)
 Nonverbal Score (m=95, sd=14)
 10 LM Peers, matched for age equivalent scores
on PLS-3, Age 3;3-5;6 (m= 4.07, sd= 0.79)
 10 AM Peers, Aged 4;6- 6;11 (m= 6.21, sd= 0.65)
Procedure
 Participants shown 5 blocks of 20 short video
vignettes. The videos contained a demonstrator
performing different short action scenes with a
narrator describing the actions. Following the
action scene a narrator’s voice asked “What did
the (character) do?”
 Each video vignette required the participant to
produce a sentence containing the
dative, locative, or distracter (in, on) prepositions.
 8 dative, 8 locative, and 4 distractor targets
included in each block.
Example 
Between Group Differences for
Prepositional Phrase (% correct)
100
90
*
*
80
92.25
70
60
50
80.04
*
*
40
30
87.26
98.64
44.18
SLI
LM
58.25
AM
20
10
0
Dative Phrs
DPhr. (F1,19 = 9.194, p=0.014)
Locative Phrs
LPhr. (F1,19 = 6.067, p=0.036)
Between Group Differences for Target
Preposition Accuracy (% correct)
100
90
80
70
60
50
*
*
91.25
*
97.5
*
SLI
68.29
64.09
LM
40
30
38.68
43.6
20
10
0
Dative Target
DTar. (F1,19 = 7.808, p = .021)
Locative Target
LTar. (F1,19 = 5.080, p=.039)
AM
Within Group Differences for Target
Preposition Accuracy (% correct)
100
90
*
80
91.25
97.5
70
68.2
60
50
64.09
40
Dative
T
43.6
30
38.68
Locative
T
20
10
0
SLI
LM
AM
( t = -3.638, p=.005)
Examples of Errors for SLI & LM
Target prepositional
phrase
Error Example
The clown drove to the
house.
*go in front of
Woody delivered to the
bug.
The girl ran to the block.
* sit on the truck
The mean fed the peas
to the horse.
*fed it by the horse
* run by the block
Conclusions
 Children with SLI pattern similarly to TD AM peers
in production of prepositional phrases overall;
however, children with SLI are less accurate in
production of both the dative and locative target.
 There were no differences found between the SLI
group and the LM group in production of
preposition target for both the dative and locative
case.
Conclusions
 No within group differences were found for the SLI
group or their LM peers for the dative and locative
cases.
 TD AM peers demonstrated superior performance
for the locative case. This may indicate that they
understand the relationship between verbs and
their required prepositions, whereas children with
SLI and younger TD children do not.
Clinical Implications
 Current findings suggest that children with SLI
demonstrate widespread difficulties with
grammatical morphology
 Assessment of prepositions may provide
information for determining differential diagnosis
 Clinicians may want to consider prepositions as
targets for treatment goals