الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 187 |  |  |
| | | from | 187 | | |
Abstract
Down Syndrome (DS) results from a genetic chromosomal abnormality in the twenty-first chromosome. Poor cognitive and linguistic abilities are characteristic of the syndrome. Studies report an impaired language in the DS population that persists during infancy, adolescence, and adulthood. Most of the studies conducted on the linguistic deficiency in the DS population were chiefly undertaken on English-speaking individuals. Hence, the present study endeavored to investigate the phonology and syntax in a sample of Egyptian DS individuals within the Minimalist Approach.
Objectives of the Study
The current study aims at deploying the Minimalist Approach to:
1. Identify the phonological deviations prevailing in the language of a sample of Egyptian individuals with DS.
2. Analyze the syntactic structures in the language of the participants.
3. Compare the features disclosed from the analyses to those reported in the literature of typical language acquisition.
Research Questions
The study is an endeavor to answer the following research questions:
1. What are the phonological deviations in the participants’ language?
2. What are the syntactic errors prevailing in the participants’ language?
3. What Universal Grammar (UG) rules license these structures?
Hypothesis of the Study
The current study attempts to verify the following hypotheses:
1. The phonological processes prevailing in the participants’ language can be accounted for by the processes found in typical language acquisition.
2. Universal grammar rules license the syntactic errors prevalent in the participants’ language.
3. Inductive areas of language acquisition show more delay in acquisition within the syndrome.
The study employs a UG approach in the analysis. The theory of UG postulates that an internalized biologically programmed language faculty dictates the acquisition of language through a formal set of rules that direct and license the well-formedness of sentence structures and allocate structural relations to the minimal syntactic units defined as “formatives”. Based on the principles of UG, children formulate a grammar that corresponds to a small sample of well-formed sentences extracted from the “primary linguistic data” they are exposed to (Chomsky, 1965).
The thesis is divided into five chapters; Chapter one provides an overall background of the study, the research questions, the organization of the thesis, and the research hypotheses. Chapter two presents the theoretical framework employed in the analysis and showcases language acquisition within typically developing children with a specific focus on the acquisition of phonology and Syntax and presents an overview of Egyptian Arabic. It overviews the literature of the linguistic impairment in DS with specific reference to phonology and Syntax as well. Chapter three deals with the prospective phonological analysis and chapter four provides the syntactic one. Finally, chapter five discusses the findings and results of the study.
By investigating the phonological deviations in the participants’ language, the study revealed phonological deviations characteristic of the syndrome. The prevalent noncompulsory phonological processes underlying the participants’ phonological deviations include elision, assimilation, substitutions, and metathesis. Such phonological processes are reportedly characteristic of early child language (ECL) in typical language acquisition.
The syntactic analysis reflected that the omission of Functional Categories (FCs) is prevalent in the participants’ language as the functional heads in the DPs, IPs, and CPs were often omitted. Deletion of FCs is one of the main features that characterize the linguistic profile of DS. The omission of functional heads on the surface structure is licensed by the rules of UG. Despite the omission of the functional heads on the SS, they are syntactically operant on the Underlying Structure (US). A discrepancy between comprehension and production can be noted in the structures where the participants are aware of the functional heads and their projections despite being phonetically null in production.