The Distinctness Condition in SLI: More on the Specific Externalization Impairment

This paper elaborates the idea that the externalization component of language is a particularly sensitive area of affectation of Specific Language Impairment. Based on data that relate to simple transitive constructions and interrogative and relative elaborations thereof, the thesis is explored that all the cases under scrutiny may receive a common explanation based on one prominent principle of the linearization procedure of externalization: namely, Distinctness. We conclude that children with Specific Language Impairment are not freed from this principle, but that they fulfill it by means of idiosyncratic strategies, relatively to the ones put forward by unimpaired speakers.