Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T03:16:30.477Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The relation of utterance length to grammatical complexity in normal and language-disordered groups

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Hollis S. Scarborough ,
Leslie Rescorla ,
Helen Tager-Flusberg ,
Anne E. Fowler  and
Vicki Sudhalter
Hollis S. Scarborough*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Leslie Rescorla
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
Helen Tager-Flusberg
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Anne E. Fowler
Affiliation:
Haskins Laboratories
Vicki Sudhalter
Affiliation:
Institute for Basic Research on Developmental Disabilities
*
H. Scarborough, Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY 11210
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mean length of utterance (MLU) in morphemes was examined as a predictor of the grammatical complexity of natural language corpora of normal preschoolers and of children and adolescents with delayed language, Fragile X syndrome, Down syndrome, and autism. The Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) served as the measure of syntactic and morphological proficiency. For all groups, a strong curvilinear association between measures was found across the MLU range from 1.0 to about 4.5. Correlations were weaker when MLU exceeded 3.0 than during earlier stages of language development, however, confirming previous suggestions that MLU becomes less closely associated with grammatical development as linguistic proficiency increases. For the language-disordered groups, moreover, the curves relating the two measures differed from the curves for the normal preschoolers because MLU frequently overestimated actual IPSyn scores. The results are discussed with respect to the use of MLU in conjunction with other measures of syntactic complexity in the study of atypical language development.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 23 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Baron-Cohen, S. (1989). Do autistic children have obsessions and compulsions? British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 28, 193–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bayley, N. (1969). Bayley Scales of Infant Development. New York: Psychological Corp.Google Scholar
Bloom, L. (1970). Language development: Form and function in emerging grammars. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bloom, L. (1973). One word at a time. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Bloom, L., Lightbown, P., & Hood, L. (1975). Structure and variation in child language. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 40(2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, D. J., Paul, R., & Volkmar, F. (1986). Issues in the classification of pervasive and other developmental disorders: Toward DSM-IV. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 25, 213–220.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, D. J., Paul, R., & Volkmar, F. (1987). Issues in the classification of pervasive developmental disorders and associated conditions. In Cohen, D. J. & Donnellan, A. M. (Eds.), Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders (pp. 20–40). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Crystal, D. (1974). A review of Brown’s A first language. Journal of Child Language, 1, 289–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, D., Fletcher, P., & Garman, M. (1976). The grammatical analysis of language disability: A procedure for assessment and remediation. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Denckla, M. B. (1986). New diagnostic criteria for autism and related behavioral disorders: Guidelines for research protocols. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 25, 221–224.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Villiers, J. G., & de Villiers, P. A. (1973). A cross-sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in child speech. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2, 267–278.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fowler, A. E. (1985). Language acquisition in Down syndrome children: Production and comprehension (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1984). Dissertation Abstracts International, 46(1–B), 324.Google Scholar
Fowler, A. E. (1988). Determinants of rate of language growth in children with Down syndrome. In Nadel, L. (Ed.), The psychobiology of Down syndrome. Cambridge, MA: MIT/Bradford.Google Scholar
Fowler, A. E. (1990). Language abilities in children with Down syndrome: Evidence for a specific syntactic delay. In Cicchetti, D. & Beeghly, M. (Eds.), Down syndrome: The developmental perspective (pp. 302–328). New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowler, A., Gelman, R., & Gleitman, L. (1980, October). A comparison of normal and retardate language equated on MLU. Paper presented to the Boston University Conference on Child Language Development, Boston.Google Scholar
Hollingshead, A. B., & Redlich, F. C. (1958). Social class and mental illness. New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, J., & Schery, T. (1976). The use of grammatical morphemes by children with communication disorders. In Morehead, D. & Morehead, A. (Eds.), Normal and deficient child language (pp. 239–258). Baltimore: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, J. R., & Kamhi, A. (1984). The same can be less: Syntactic and semantic aspects of the utterances of language impaired children. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 30, 65–86.Google Scholar
Klee, T., & Fitzgerald, M. D. (1985). The relation between grammatical development and mean length of utterance in morphemes. Journal of Child Language, 12, 251–269.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klima, E., & Bellugi, U. (1966). Syntactic regularities in the speech of children. In Lyons, J. & Wales, R. (Eds.), Psycholinguistic papers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Kramer, C. A., James, S. L., & Saxman, J. H. (1979). A comparison of language samples elicited at home and in the clinic. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 44, 321–330.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacWhinney, B., & Walter, J. (1987). CHAT manual. Transcript Analysis, 4, 1–52.Google Scholar
Miller, J. F., & Chapman, R. S. (1985). Systematic analysis of language transcripts: User’s guide. Madison: University of Wisconsin Language Analysis Laboratory.Google Scholar
Morehead, D., & Ingram, D. (1973). The development of base syntax in normal and linguistically deviant children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 16, 330–352.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, K. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 38 (Serial No. 149).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newport, E. L., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. (1977). Mother I’d rather do it myself: Some effects and non-effects of maternal speech style. In Snow, C. E. & Ferguson, C. A. (Eds.), Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L. (1989). The language development survey: A screening tool for the identification of language delay in toddlers. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 54, 587–599.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rescorla, L., & Schwartz, E. (1990). Outcome of specific expressive language delay. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11, 393–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reynell, J. K. (1985). Reynell developmental language scales. Windsor, UK: NFER-Nelson.Google Scholar
Rondal, J. A. (1978). Developmental sentence scoring procedure and the delay-difference question in language development of Down’s syndrome children. Mental Retardation, 16, 169–171.Google Scholar
Rondal, J. A., Ghiotto, M., Bredart, S., & Bachelet, J. (1987). Age-relation, reliability and grammatical validity of measures of utterance length. Journal of Child Language, 14, 433–446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutter, M. (1978). Diagnosis and definition. In Rutter, M. & Schopler, E. (Eds.), Autism: A reappraisal of concepts and treatment (pp. 1–25). New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarborough, H. S. (1989). Prediction of reading disability from familial and individual differences. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 101–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarborough, H. S. (1990). Index of Productive Syntax. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarborough, H. S., & Dobrich, W. (1985). Illusory recovery from early language delay. Proceedings of the Symposium on Research on Child Language Disorders, 6, 90–99.Google Scholar
Scarborough, H. S., & Dobrich, W. (1990). Development of children with early language delay. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 33, 70–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shipley, E. F., Smith, C., & Gleitman, L. R. (1969). A study in the acquisition of language: Free responses to commands. Language, 45, 322–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sparrow, S. S., Balla, D. A., & Cicchetti, D. V. (1984). Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Co.Google Scholar
Sudhalter, V., Cohen, I. L., Silverman, W., & Wolf-Schein, E. G. (1990). Conversational analyses of males with Fragile X, Down syndrome, and autism: A comparison of the emergence of deviant language. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 94, 431–441.Google ScholarPubMed
Tager-Flusberg, H., Calkins, S., Nolin, T., Baumberger, T., Anderson, M., & Chadwick-Dias, A. (1990). A longitudinal study of language acquisition in autistic and Down syndrome children. Journal of A utism and Developmental Disorders, 20, 1–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Terman, L. M., & Merrill, M. A. (1973). Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: 1972 norms edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Wells, G. (1985). Language development in the preschool years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wiegel-Crump, C. A. (1981). The development of grammar in Down’s syndrome children between the MA’s of 2–0 and 6–11 years. Education and Training of the Mentally Retarded, 6, 24–60.Google Scholar
Wolf-Schein, E. G., Sudhalter, V., Cohen, I. L., Fisch, G. S., Hanson, D., Pfadt, A. G., Hagerman, R., Jenkins, E. C., & Brown, W. T. (1987, 07). Speech-language and the Fragile X syndrome: Initial findings. American Speech-Language Hearing Association, 35–38.Google ScholarPubMed