Language learning and language change in children with specific language impairment who speak African American English

The nature of dialect use and dialect change was investigated in children with specific language impairment (SLI) who speak African American English (AAE). Participants ranging in age from 6; 11 (years; months) to 8; 11 (mean age = 7; 6) were assigned to one of four treatment conditions: Individual Language Intervention (ILI), Computer-Assisted Language Intervention (CALI), Fast ForWord-Language (FFWL), or Academic Enrichment (AE). Changes in type, frequency, and grammatical use of AAE dialect features were analyzed over time (pre-intervention, post-intervention and six months post-intervention) via contextual analysis and measures of dialect density. Contextual analysis indicated that this group of AAE speakers with language impairment demonstrated a varied repertoire of dialect patterns. The grammaticality of AAE features was highly variable across time. There were no statistically significant differences in measures of dialectal density, grammaticality, or in standardized test scores for the four experimental groups. Intervention in mainstream English did not have an effect on dialect use in this sample of AAE speakers with SLI.Communication Sciences and Disorder