Examines speech samples from six children aged 2 years to 2 years, 5 months, with Mean Lengths of Utterance ranging from 2.93 to 4.14, were examined for evidence of six syntactic categories: determiner, adjective, noun, noun phrase, preposition, and prepositional phrase. (HOD)

The study found that mean length of utterance (MLU) and age were significantly correlated in both language impaired (N=24) and normal preschool children with rates of MLU change also similar for both groups of children. (DB)

Examines questions related to whether children with severe learning disabilities go through the same developmental stages as children without such problems, or whether they develop along different lines. Explores the "delay" versus "deviance" issue in relation to linguistic development in children with Down's syndrome. Looks…

Mothers' speech directed to their children (N=61) from three groups --nonretarded, Down Syndrome, and language-impaired--was examined to evaluate the ways mothers adjust their speech to the child's developmental condition and linguistic competency. Mothers showed differences in mean length of utterance, use of total imperatives, evaluative…

The study examined the use of primary sentence stress by seven preschool autistic children with mean length of utterance (MLU) scores between 1.9 and 4.1 morphemes with normal and aphasic subjects serving as controls. Differences were seen in the number of correct responses and in the pattern of stress misassignment. (Author/DB)

This paper reports on two studies of finite verb use to determine whether children with specific language impairments, who use grammatical morphemes less than typical children matched for mean length of utterance (MLU), produce other language details more frequently. The paper concluded that offsetting effects are not necessary in principle, given…