This study examines the morphosyntactic development, specifically verb morphology, of typically-developing Bangla-speaking children between the ages of two and four. Three verb forms were studied: the Present Simple, the Present Progressive and the Past Progressive. The study was motivated by the observations that reliable language-specific…

Structured input from both teachers and peers maximizes the opportunities for preschoolers to learn grammatical forms. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using a teacher and a peer with typical hearing and language skills to model grammatically correct verbal responses to action "wh-" questions…

Morphosyntactic skills in spontaneous and elicited production of a 7-year-old boy with specific language impairment (SLI) were examined and compared to those of younger, mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched, typically-developing children. This study focused on inflectional phrase structures as well as complex constructions in order to…

Language sample analysis measures have long been promoted as exhibiting greater ecological validity than formal testing in the assessment of language disorder in children. In practice, their use is often restricted to preschool children, owing to lack of normative information, as well as criticisms of the validity of commonly used measures for the…

Mean length of utterance (MLU) of 15 Down's Syndrome children, aged 2-12, was examined and found to correlate highly with chronological age despite the children's language delays, at least up to MLU 3.00. MLU also predicted complexity and diversity of bound morphemes and major syntactic structures from MLU 1.00-3.50. (Author/JDD)

Despite the common use of mean length of utterance (MLU) as a diagnostic measure, what it actually reflects in terms of linguistic knowledge is relatively unclear. This study explored the extent to which variance in MLU could be accounted for by a measure of expressive vocabulary and a measure of morphosyntax in a group of 44 typically-developing…

The proposed framework assumes six developmental stages according to mean length of utterance in morphemes. Within each stage, syntactic forms and semantic relations interact. In assessment, each utterance is analyzed for features which describe current language abilities. Language goals are developed based on existing and expected features.…

Background: Although a number of studies have been conducted on normal acquisition in French, systematic methods for analysis of French and normative group data have been lacking. Aims: To develop a systematic method for the analysis of language samples in Quebec French, and to provide preliminary normative data on early lexical and syntactic…