The Status of Gender and Agreement Features in the Grammar of two SLI Children 1

Maria Mastropavlou Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Abstract The aim of this presentation is to investigate the status of Agreement features and in particular [Gender] in the grammar of Greek children with Specific Language Impairment. Feature assignment is investigated with respect to Chomskys notion of LF-interpretability. It has been argued that AGR features (phi-features) on definite articles and adjectives are interpretable only in PF but not in LF, whereas phi-features of Nouns are LF-interpretable. If features that are non-interpretable at LF are mostly affected by SLI, then there should be a distinction between the assignment of [Gender] on Articles and Nouns, as [Gender] is considered an inherent property of the noun stem, whereas in adjectives it is a property of the inflectional affix. There should also be a distinction between [Gender] assignment as opposed to [Number] and [Case] assignment, features that are of a different status. Keywords: agreement, specific language impairment, LF-interpretability, feature assignment 1. Introduction 1.1 Specific Language Impairment Specific Language Impairment (SLI) appears in children of 3 to 6 years of age and it causes serious problems in the development of language, especially grammar. The language difficulties are not accompanied with hearing or articulation deficits, brain damage or psychological disorders and the impaired children are characterised by normal intelligence (IQ>85). The prevalence of the impairment is about 7-10% of births every year (Leonard, 1998). 1.2 Agreement Features and LF-Interpretability. It has been argued that agreement features in verbs as well as case and number features in nouns are non-interpretable in LF (Logical Form) in Chomskys terminology (1995). Likewise, the definite article, along with accusative clitics, has been argued to lack LFinterpretable features such as referentiality and definiteness (Tsimpli & Stavrakaki, 1999; Tsimpli, 2001). On the other hand, the indefinite article, strong pronouns and possessive clitics contain the interpretable features of referentiality and definiteness. Coming to the features of interest, gender is claimed to be a feature of the stem in nouns, whereas it is considered part of the inflectional suffix in adjectives and articles
1

In: M. Mattheoudakis & A. Psaltou-Joysey (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (p. 356373). Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: 2003.

(Ralli, 1994). Based on this claim, it can be assumed that gender constitutes an interpretable feature in nouns but not in articles or adjectives. On the other hand, number and case are features of the inflectional suffix in articles, adjectives and nouns. Therefore, there appears to be a differentiation in the status of gender as opposed to that of case and number, regarding LF-interpretability. This differentiation is expected to be manifest in the results of the present study. 1.3 Research Goals and Predictions Primary goal of this study is to test the accessibility of the features of gender, case and number as well as agreement regarding these features. Moreover, the way these features are lexically realised in different grammatical categories, such as articles and nouns, will be tested. The possibility that any differences in their realisation in ARTs and Ns trigger differences in the childrens performance when producing these two categories will be examined as well. In the light of the above theoretical framework, it is predicted that the childrens performance in gender marking in nouns will be better than in articles, given the fact that gender belongs to the stem in Ns and is LF-interpretable but to the suffix in ARTs which makes in uninterpretable. On the other hand, number and case are not expected to differ in the way they are realised in Ns and ARTs, as they belong to the inflection and thus lack interpretability in both categories; however, they are still expected to cause greater difficulties than gender marking, especially when it comes to nouns.

2. Method 2.1 Subjects Two SLI children participated in the study: Stelios, aged 5;11 and Dinos, 5;6. Both children had been diagnosed with Specific Language Impairment in the Centre of Communal Psychological Hygiene in Athens. 2 They both fulfilled all required by the literature criteria for the diagnosis of SLI. None of the children had any speech therapy history.

2.2 Experiments Speech Elicitation Test 2.2.1 Existing Words

The first part of the test aimed at the production of the features in question in existing words. Table 1 gives a detailed description of the tasks included in this part of the test.

I would like to thank the speech therapist responsible for the children who participated in this study, Mrs Maria Vlassopoulou, for her valuable help in the collection of the data.

Table 1. Speech production test part I: existing words

Content 8MSC I. Nouns 20 Ns 5FEM 7NEUT 6MSC II. Noun Phrases III. Possessive NPs 18 NPs 6FEM 6NEUT 12 NPs 6MSC 6FEM

Method 10 SG 10 PL 9SG 9PL 12SG The child named the content of the pictures. The child answered questions like which of the three is green?, choosing one of the objects in a picture. The child answered questions like Whose is the bike?

2.2.2

Non-existing Words

Twenty-two nonsense words were created so that they would follow phonological and morphological rules of Modern Greek language. Corresponding pictures of non-existing animals and objects were drawn. The tasks are described in Tables 2 and 3.
Table 2. Stimulus Noun is accompanied by an Indefinite article

Method 2 MSC I. Indefinite Article + Noun a. +Concord bet. ART-N 6 Ns + IND ART 2 FEM 2 NEUT 2FEM/ NEUT 2MSC/ FEM 2NEUT/ MSC The child sees 2 pictures of a non-existing animal/object in two different colours and hears the noun with an indefinite article. The child closes his/her eyes and cards are hidden in the room. The child finds cards in the room and names the animal/object: e.g. eki ine o kitrinos lekuros (theres the yellow lekuros). The child sees 2 pictures of a non-existing animal/object in two different colours and hears the noun with an indefinite article, which does NOT agree in gender with the N suffix (e.g. enas-MSC panatidhaFEM). The same procedure as above is followed.

b. -Concord bet. ART-N

6 Ns + IND ART

Table 3. Stimulus Noun is given without any determiner indicating gender

1 MSC II. Bare Nouns a. Unambiguous suffix 4 Ns with unambiguous suffixes 2 FEM 1 NEUT 3 MSC/ NEUT 3 FEM/ NEUT

b. Ambiguous suffix

6 Ns with ambiguous suffixes

The same procedure is followed. The input phrase is of the form afto leghete krilopi (this is called krilopi). The N suffix clearly indicates the gender of the N. The Ns end in ambiguous suffixes e.g. afto leghete piteli (this is called piteli FEM/NEUT). The above procedure is followed

3. Results 3.1 Existing Words 3.1.1 Bare Nouns

Two analyses of the Bare Nouns data were carried out; one regarding Number marking and one Gender marking. The results are presented in figures 1 and 2 below.

Figure 1. Error scores in number marking during the production of bare nouns
Bare Nouns - Num be r

100% 80% E rror scores 60% 40% 20%

SINGULAR PLURAL

50%

15% 0% 0%
Dinos

0% Stelios

It is clearly seen in the figure above that plural nouns cause greater difficulties than singular ones for both children. The following are some indicative errors that the children made: (1) (2) (3) tileorasi-SG -- instead of tileorasis-PL (=televisions). vasilies-PL -- instead of vasiliadhes-PL (=kings) dhendro-SG -- instead of dhendra-PL (=trees)

Figure 2. Error scores in number marking during the production of bare nouns
Bare Nouns - Ge nde r

100% 80% Er r s o e ro c r s 60% 40% 20% 0% Stelios Dinos 12% 0%0% 20% 12% 0%

MSC FEM NEUT

Figure 2 provides a somewhat different picture. The children appear to have small difficulties in gender marking of bare nouns. Both children seem to face difficulties in the production of specific MSC nouns (i vasilies instead of i vasiliadhes kings). However, this cannot be considered as gender error since the suffix es wrongly used by both children instead of adhes also belongs to MSC nouns, which however belong to another category. Furthermore, FEM nouns seem to cause only small difficulties (and only for one of the two children), whereas no problems appear to be encountered with NEUT nouns by the children. 3.1.2 Noun Phrases (Which of the three is green? the crocodile).

In this task, the children were required to produce noun phrases, consisting of a definite article and a noun. The results in this task are presented in Table 4.
Table 4. Agreement errors and article omissions in DEF.ART.-N. noun phrases

MSC FEM NEUT T MSC FEM NEUT T

CORR 5 83% 6 6 17 94% 4 66% 6 6 16 89%

INC.ART. 0 0 0 0 1 17% 0 0 1 5.5%

INC.N. 1 17% 0 0 1 6% 0 0 0 0

OMIT 0 0 0 0 1 17% 0 0 1 5.5%

T 6 6 6 18 6 6 6 18

The analysis presented in table 4 shows that only few agreement errors and article omissions were made by the children in the production of noun phrases. However, it is interesting to note that all errors and omissions appeared in MSC contexts, whereas FEM and NEUT noun phrases were correctly produced in 100% of the contexts by both children. Some examples are given below.

DINOS

STELIOS

(4) Examiner : Ti apo ta tria ine Which of the three is Dinos: *krokodhilos inst. of crocodile-MSC.SG.NOM.

prasino? green? o krokodhikos the-MSC.SG.NOM. crocodile-MSC.SG.NOM.

(5) Examiner : Ti apo ta tria ine gkri? Which of the three is grey? Dinos: *to kuvas inst. of o kuvas the-NEUT.SG.NOM bucket-MSC.SG.NOM. the-MSC.SG.NOM. bucketSC.SG.NOM

3.1.3

Possessive NPs

Errors in the use or Possessive noun phrases were divided into those that constituted gender agreement errors (that is, only the N or the ART were used incorrectly) and those that did not constitute agreement errors, as the whole NP would be used in the wrong case. The results are presented in Table 5 below.
Table 5. Case marking in Possessive NPs

STELIOS

CORR MSC FEM T MSC FEM T 6 100% 4 66% 10 83.3% 5 83% 2 33% 7 58.3%

INCORRECT +AGR. -AGR 0 0 0 1 17% ACC.art. 1 8.3% 1 17% 0 1NOM.art. 0 3 50% 2ACC.art.s 4 33.3%

DINOS

ART OMIT. 0 1 17% 1 8.3% 0 1 17% 1 8.3%

T 6 6 12 6 6 12

In the above presentation, it can be observed that 4 out of 5 errors (INCORRECT) are due to incorrect article use, while only 1 out of 5 involves incorrect use of the N. What is more, the 1 case of incorrect N use also involves incorrect ART use, so that agreement between them is successfully established. Finally, two instances of article omission were observed in the production of possessive NPs by the two children, which both occurred in FEM contexts. Here are some characteristic examples: (6) Examiner: Pjanu ine i roz Whose is the pink Stelios: *dhaskalas instead of teacher-FEM.GEN.

zaketa? jacket? tis dhaskalas the-FEM.GEN. teacher-FEM.GEN.

(=the teachers) (7) Examiner: Pjanu ine ta jalja? Whose are the glasses? Stelios: *ti jajas the-FEM.ACC. grandmother-FEM.GEN. instead of tis jajas the-FEM.GEN. grandmother-FEM.GEN. (=the fat grandmothers)

*ti khondris the-FEM.ACC. fat-FEM.GEN. tis khondris the-FEM.GEN. fat-FEM.GEN.

3.2 Non-existing Words 3.2.1 Indefinite Article + Noun (Heres a lekuros)

In the tasks that contained nonsense nouns, the childrens responses were analysed with regard to gender marking on the determiners and adjectives used when referring to the novel nouns. +Concord between ART and N In this task, the stimuli provided to the children contained a indefinite article followed by the novel noun. Gender agreement characterised the NP. The results of this task are presented in Table 6 below.
Table 6. Childrens production or determiners and adjectives referring to NPs of indef.ART+novel noun, characterised by gender concord

MSC FEM NEUT T MSC FEM NEUT T

CORR 1 1 2 4 67% 2 1 1 4 67%

INCORR 1 neut 1 msc 0 2 33% 0 1 msc 1 msc 2 33%

T 2 2 2 6 2 2 2 6

What can be clearly seen in the above presentation is that the two children faced difficulties in marking determiners and adjectives for gender when referring to the novel noun, although its gender was indicated in the stimuli by the presence of the indefinite article. 3 out of 4 mistakes involved use of MSC adjectives to refer to FEM or NEUT nouns. Moreover, most of the errors did NOT constitute agreement errors, as the children tended to change the nouns gender as well. This can be seen in the following examples.

DINOS

STELIOS

(8) Examiner: Edho ine enas lekuros Here is a-MSC.NOM. lekuros-MSC.NOM. Stelios: *ena *lekuro *kitrino -- inst. of lekuros kitrinos a-NEUT.NOM. lekuro-NEUT.NOM. yellow-NEUT.NOM. lekuros-MSC. yellow-MSC. (9) Examiner: Edho ine mia tremoni Here is a-FEM.NOM. tremoni-FEM.NOM. Stelios: *enas *tremonis *kokinos eki a-MSC.NOM. tremonis-MSC.NOM. red-MSC.NOM. there. Dinos: *tremonis *kokinos -- inst. of tremoni kokini tremonis-MSC.NOM. red-MSC.NOM. tremoni-FEM. red-FEM.

Concord between ART and N. The method followed in this task was very useful because, since there was inconsistency between the gender of the article and the noun suffix, it allowed us to observe the preference the children would express towards the gender either of the noun or the article. The table below presents the input gender combinations (vertically) and the preferences of the children (horizontally). Cases when neither the gender of the article nor that of the noun was preferred and used are considered as errors (marked as INCORR. in the table).
Table 7. Gender preferences expressed by the children in the concord between ART and N condition

Preferred Gender STELIOS ART/N MSC/FEM NEUT/MSC FEM/NEUT TOTAL MSC/FEM NEUT/MSC FEM/NEUT TOTAL

ARTICLE 1 0 1 2 33% 2 0 1 3 50%

NOUN 0 2 1 3 50% 0 2 1 3 50%

INCORR 1 0 0 1 17% 0 0 0 0

TOT 2 2 2 6 2 2 2 6

It is interesting to note that no clear preference towards ART or N gender was observed in the childrens production. However, a clear preference towards MSC gender in combinations where it was present either in the ART or the N was observed in both childrens speech. Finally, in combinations where MSC was not present (FEM/NEUT), both genders were equally preferred by both children. The above behaviour can be clearly seen in the examples provided.

DINOS

(10) Examiner: Edho ine enas panatidha Here is a-MSC. panatidha-FEM. (MSC/FEM) Stelios: panatidha *mavro, panatidha *kitrino panatidha-FEM black-NEUT. panatidha-FEM yellow-NEUT Dinos: panatidha *mavros panatidha *kitrinos panatidha-FEM black-MSC panatidha-FEM yellow-MSC

3.2.2

Bare Noun (This is called tamoritis)

Unambiguous suffix This task was designed in such a way that it could give us the opportunity to observe the childrens ability to identify gender and mark it on adjectives based on the noun suffix alone. The results are presented in Table 8 below.
Table 8. Gender marking in determiners and adjectives referring to novel nouns with unambiguous suffix

STELIOS

MSC FEM NEUT TOTAL MSC FEM NEUT TOTAL

CORR 0 0 1 1 25% 1 1 0 2 50%

1 2

1 1

INCORR neut 1 msc 1 neut 0 3 75% 0 msc msc 2 50%

TOTAL 1 2 1 4 1 2 1 4

This presentation shows serious difficulties in identifying and marking gender correctly based on the N suffix alone. What can also be observed is a preference towards MSC determiners and adjectives when referring to FEM and NEUT Ns by Dinos, whereas Stelios seems to have preferred NEUT gender. The examples below give a comprehensible picture of the childrens behaviour in this task. (11) Examiner: Afto lejete krilopi. This is called krilopi-FEM Stelios: *kitrinos *krilopis. yellow-MSC krilopis-MSC Dinos: *krilopis *kokinos. krilopis-MSC red-MSC

DINOS

Ambiguous Suffix In this task, the noun suffix was ambiguous with regard to gender, meaning that it could take two possible gender interpretations. Taking advantage of the fact that two genders can share the same suffixes in some categories as well as the fact that in those cases gender can be disambiguated either by the presence of a determiner or by spelling differences, absolutely no gender indication of this kind was provided so that the preference of the children between the two possible gender interpretations could be clearly investigated. Table 9 below presents the possible gender interpretations of the input nouns (vertically) and the childrens preferences (horizontally). Cases in which the children used neither of the possible interpretations were counted as errors (marked as INC. in the table).
Table 9. Childrens gender interpretations of novel nouns with ambiguous suffix

PREFERENCE SUFFIX MSC/NEUT FEM/NEUT TOTAL MSC/NEUT FEM/NEUT TOTAL

STELIOS

MSC 3 1 (INC.) 4 3 3 (INC.) 6

FEM 0 0 0 0 0 0

NEUT 0 2 2 0 0 0

TOT 3 3 6 3 3 6

What we can see here is a clear preference towards MSC interpretation in MSC/NEUT Ns as well as preference towards NEUT in FEM/NEUT Ns by Stelios. What is more, the children tend to use incorrectly MSC determiners and adjectives with FEM/NEUT nouns. Note that FEM gender was never preferred as an interpretation, not even in nouns with FEM/NEUT suffixes. (12) Examiner: Afto leghete kalemi This is called kalemi-FEM/NEUT Stelios: kalemi aspro ke prasino kalemi-NEUT white-NEUT and green-NEUT Dinos: kalemi *prasinos kalemi-FEM/NEUT green-MSC

DINO

4. Discussion 4.1 Existing Words In order to be able to determine the status of gender in relation to other agreement features (number and case), a number of comparisons of the childrens performances in different features were carried out. Additionally, comparisons of performances in different grammatical categories were also made for each feature, so that any differences in feature realisation and processing in these categories would be investigated. 4.1.1 Bare Nouns

Both children faced greater difficulties in producing plural nouns than singular ones. As for gender, more mistakes were made in masculine than in feminine or neuter nouns, all of which, however, involved the production of the plural form of a particular, imparisyllabic noun (vasiliasvasiliadhes - - kingkings). Comparing the performance in Number versus Gender marking gave us the expected results, as Figure 3 below shows.
Figure 3. Comparison of childrens performance in gender and number marking in bare nouns
Ge nde r and Num be r M ark ing in Bare Nouns

50% 40% E r sco rro res 30% 20% 10% 0% 25% 15% 10% 5%

Stelios Dinos

Number

Gender

The above figure indicates higher performance in Gender marking than in Number marking in the use of bare nouns. This can be explained by the claim that Gender is interpretable in Ns, since it is a feature of the N stem, as opposed to Number, which belongs to the N suffix and is non-interpretable. Therefore, the children faced greater difficulties in marking bare nouns for number than for gender. 4.1.2 Possessive Case in Ns + Def. Art.s

By looking at case marking on nouns and definite articles, we can gain an insight into the way the feature is realised in the two categories as well as in the way these two categories are accessed by the two children.

Figure 4. Comparison of possessive case marking on definite articles and nouns

Possessive Case
100% 90% 96%

C rre t U e o c s

80% 71% 70% 60% 50%

Articles

Nouns

Clearly greater difficulties in marking definite articles for genitive case than in marking nouns can be observed in the production of the two children. This can be accounted for by the claim that definite articles lack LF-interpretable features as opposed to nouns. If this lack of interpretable features renders articles less accessible to SLI children, the overall lower performance in the use of definite articles could be attributed to low accessibility of this category compared to nouns. 4.1.3 Case + Gender in NPs

It would be interesting to look into the childrens performance in Case marking compared to Gender marking on articles and nouns, as well as their production of correct agreement concerning these two features. Such an analysis will provide an idea about the difference in nature between the two features, namely gender and case, as well as the way they are realised in different categories, namely articles and nouns. Figure 5 below presents the results of this comparison.
Figure 5. Comparison of gender and number marking in NPs
Ge nde r and Cas e M ark ing in Noun Phras e s 60% 50% E rror sc ores 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 6% 6% 3% 25% 17% 4% Agreement Articles Nouns

Gender

Cas e

As far as agreement is concerned, it is obvious that performance in Gender agreement is clearly better than in Case agreement. This is probably due to accessibility differences between the two features. Furthermore, it is an indication that agreement is active in the grammar of these children, but it is feature-specific, as it is processed quite differently for each feature.

Comparing the performance in marking the two features in the two grammatical categories in question, i.e. definite articles and nouns, we observe a clear difference between gender and case marking in articles, whereas the difference in marking nouns for these features is very small (1%). Marking articles for case seems to be a lot more difficult than nouns, whereas there does not seem to be such an obvious difference between the two categories in gender marking. This fact indicates that there are differences not only in the way different features are processed but also in the way each feature is realised in different grammatical categories. 4.2 Non-existing Words 4.2.1 Indefinite Article + Noun

+Concord between ART+N Although one would expect no difficulties in producing correctly marked determiners and adjectives to refer to novel nouns when an indefinite article was provided in the input, the results show quite the opposite, as there were a lot of gender-marking errors. In particular, 3 out of 4 mistakes involved use of MSC determiners and/or adjectives to refer to FEM or NEUT nouns, which indicates a preference towards MSC gender over FEM and NEUT. Concord between ART+N The aim of this task was to examine the childrens preference towards the gender expressed by the articles or nouns given. However, no such preference was observed. What was observed was a preference towards MSC gender, either when it was expressed by the article or the noun. Both FEM and NEUT genders were equally used when MSC was absent from the input combination. 4.3 Bare Nouns 4.3.1 Unambiguous suffix

As expected, serious difficulties were faced by the children in this task. Comparing the childrens performance in the two conditions with and without a determiner in the stimuli we can probably establish the role of the determiner in gender identification and marking by the SLI children. A comparison of performance in +ART. and ART. conditions is presented in figure 6 below.
Figure 6. Childrens performance in +ART and ART conditions of the nonsense words task
Ge nde r M ark ing in Conditions of +Article and -Article 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% Article Present Article Absent 33% 33% 75%

Stelios

E r sc res rro o

Dinos
50%

As the above figure indicates, both children faced clearly greater difficulties in the task where no indefinite article was given in the input. This clearly means that the presence of the indefinite article in the stimulus seems to be essential for the identification of the novel words gender. This fact can be explained in two possible ways. Firstly, it can be assumed that the lexical realisation of gender is more intense in the article as a grammatical category than it is in the noun, so that its presence constitutes an important cue for the identification of the nouns gender; thus, based on this, the children are able to correctly mark determiners when referring to the novel word. However, if the feature of gender was more intensely carried by the article, preference towards the gender of the article should have been observed in the Concord between article and noun condition of the test. Still, no such preference was noted. A second explanation and under the given assumptions a more plausible one would be to assume that it is not the lexical presence of the article, but the syntactic agreement relation it forms with the noun that acts as a cue, helping the children to identify gender. This agreement effect indicates that agreement as a syntactic function is active in these childrens grammar, but is feature-specific, as was noted above. 4.3.2 Ambiguous suffix

It was observed that, with nouns whose suffix involved a MSC/NEUT pair of interpretations, children tended to choose the MSC one. However, this fact could be due to frequency differences of the suffixes chosen the suffix as is shared by masculine and neuter nouns but it is more frequent in masculine than in neuter nouns. Nouns that could be interpreted as FEM or NEUT were mainly interpreted as feminine by Stelios, whereas Dinos kept wrongly using masculine determiners and adjectives to refer to such nouns. In all, a preference of NEUT over FEM and of MSC over NEUT gender was observed. This could be an indication although not a proof that probably masculine is a form of default gender in Modern Greek.

5. Conclusions In the light of the theoretical framework described, the results of the present study lead to the following conclusions. To begin with, gender seems to be more accessible when it comes to nouns than number and case, which is an anticipated result if we acknowledge the fact that gender is interpretable on nouns whereas number and case are not. Nevertheless, this apparent difference in accessibility between gender on one hand and case and number on the other cannot constitute solid proof of its interpretability. We cannot overlook the possibility that this difference could also be attributable to differences in properties between the two categories, given that nouns constitute a lexical and articles a functional category, which has been shown to pose greater difficulties for SLI children. Still, the fact that gender marking on adjectives also a lexical category was not completely unproblematic, as the results of the non-existing words task reveal, can only be accounted for by the lack of interpretability of gender when it is realised in the inflectional suffix as happens with adjectives and not in the stem as it is on nouns. Coming to agreement as a syntactic phenomenon, it seems to be active in the grammar of the two SLI children, as its effects in the identification of gender of novel

nouns indicate. However, differences in the way gender agreement and case agreement are processed indicate that, though active, it is feature-specific. Finally, the fact that masculine gender was frequently preferred over feminine and neuter in the non-existing words tasks, where children had to choose between two possible gender interpretations (either expressed in article and noun or in the noun suffix alone) could be an indication that masculine functions as a default gender in Greek. However, due to the fact that neuter was also preferred by one of the children (although not as frequently as masculine) and since the data is rather limited, we should regard the present results as indications rather than as reliable proof.

References
Chomsky, N., (1995). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Leonard, L.B. (1998). Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge. MIT Press. Ralli, A. (1994). Feature representations and feature-passing operations: the case of Greek nominal inflection. Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on English & Greek, School of English, Dept of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: 19-46. Tsimpli, I.M. (2001). LF-Interpretability and language development: A study of verbal and nominal features in Greek normally developing and SLI children. Brain and Language 77: 432-448. Tsimpli, I.M. & Stavrakaki, S. (1999). The effects of a morphosyntactic deficit in the determiner system: The case of a Greek SLI child. Lingua 108: 31-85.