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Va-Et-Vient, The Goin' And Comin' Of Infinitival 'To': A Study Of Children With And Without Specific Language Impairment In Cajun English, Andrew Mandell Riviere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine Cajun English (CE)-speaking children’s marking of infinitival TO. To do this, CE-speaking children’s marking of infinitival TO was compared to the marking of infinitival TO by Southern White English (SWE)- and African American English (AAE)-speaking children. Marking of infinitival TO also was examined as a function of the children’s clinical status (i.e., Specific Language Impairment, SLI, or typically developing, TD) and by the verb contexts that preceded the infinitival TO forms.

The data came from 180 kindergarteners who lived in four rural towns in Assumption Parish, Louisiana. The children’s dialect classifications were …