The acquisition of relative clause comprehension in Hebrew: A study of SLI and normal development

Comprehension of relative clauses was assessed in 10 Hebrew-speaking school-age children with syntactic SLI and in two groups of younger children with normal language development. Comprehension of subject-and object-relatives was assessed using a binary sentence-picture matching task. The findings were that while Hebrew-speaking children with normal development comprehend right-branching object relatives around the age of 6;0, children with syntactic SLI are still at chance level in object relatives by age 11;0. The four-year-olds were also at chance on object relatives. Comprehension of subject relatives was good in the SLI group, similar to the six-year-olds, and significantly better than the four-year-olds. The syntactic impairment is interpreted as a selective deficit to non-canonical sentences that are derived by movement.