The acquisition of morphosyntax by children with Down syndrome

Abstract

Down syndrome is one of the most common genetic disorders associated with intellectual disability and with cognitive delays that have clear implications for language learning, especially for the acquisition of morphosyntax. The weaknesses of Down Syndrome Children (DSC) in this area mean that they experience a time delay when compared to Typically Developing Children (TDC) and a great difficulty when acquiring multiple features of language. Some DSC do not experience a vocabulary explosion stage, most of them are not able to acquire all the morphemes of their language and their syntax tends to be always shorter and simpler than that of TDC as a consequence of their difficulties when learning complex rules. Nevertheless, the existence of an extra chromosome does not affect DSC’s comprehension as it does their production.

The main aim of this paper is to present the main characteristics of the process of morphosyntactic acquisition by DSC. In order to do so, and after a brief introduction, I will first provide a brief review of the three main stages in that same process by TDC so that a comparison between the two can be established. This comparison will reveal which features DSC find more difficult and those that seem to be impossible to acquire. I will also consider the controversial issue of bilingualism among DSC and, based on recent research, show that DSC can become bilingual although the same morphosyntax difficulties that they experience when acquiring their first language can be observed. I will then present some tests used to assess morphosyntactic development, a useful tool for teachers, parents and caretakers when they need to identify the morphosyntactic problems found in DSC. Finally, I will describe some examples of helpful games to reinforce the morphosyntactic development of DSC, which will also be a useful guide for their teachers, parents and caretakers to help this population.