The mass-count distinction in Dutch-speaking children with specific language impairment

This study reports experimental data on the acquisition of the mass-count distinction by Dutch-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). While verbal morphosyntax is known to be impaired in SLI, nominal morphosyntax has received less attention. The mass-count distinction provides an interesting test ground: count can have a plural morpheme: 'bal-en '(‘balls’), but mass cannot: *'deeg-en '(‘doughs’). Flexible nouns can easily occur in either mass or count syntax ('pizza/pizza-s'). Finally, object-mass nouns (e.g. 'furniture') are syntactically mass, but quantify over individual... Mehr ...