scholarly journals Tracking the Growth of Tense and Agreement in Children With Specific Language Impairment: Differences Between Measures of Accuracy, Diversity, and Productivity

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (12) ◽  
pp. 3590-3600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard ◽  
Eileen Haebig ◽  
Patricia Deevy ◽  
Barbara Brown
Keyword(s):  
Sample Size ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Intervention Study ◽  
Language Intervention ◽  
Growth Trajectories ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Composite Measures ◽  
Composite Scores

Purpose Composite measures of children's use of tense and agreement morphology differ in their emphasis on accuracy, diversity, or productivity, yet little is known about how these different measures change over time. An understanding of these differences is especially important for the study of children with specific language impairment, given these children's extraordinary difficulty with this aspect of grammar. Method We computed 3 types of composite scores from spontaneous speech samples obtained from 17 preschoolers with specific language impairment before, during, and after their participation in a language intervention study. These measures were the Finite Verb Morphology Composite (a measure of accuracy), the Tense Marker Total (a measure of diversity), and the Productivity Score (a measure of productivity). Results The 3 measures differed in their growth trajectories. Sample size did not alter the linear or quadratic nature of growth of any composite, although it did affect the absolute values found for the Tense Marker Total and Productivity Score. Conclusion Even when sample size is controlled, early growth can be seen in tense and agreement accuracy with relatively limited diversity and productivity, whereas later growth in diversity and productivity can occur with very little change in accuracy.

Specific Language Impairment in Swedish

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 848-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Hansson ◽  
Ulrika Nettelbladt ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Appropriate Use ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Several competing proposals have been offered to explain the grammatical difficulties experienced by children with specific language impairment (SLI). In this study, the grammatical abilities of Swedish-speaking children with SLI were examined for the purpose of evaluating these proposals and offering new findings that might be used in the development of alternative accounts. A group of preschoolers with SLI showed lower percentages of use of present tense copula forms and regular past tense inflections than normally developing peers matched for age and younger normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). Word order errors, too, were more frequent in the speech of the children with SLI. However, these children performed as well as MLU-matched children in the use of present tense inflections and irregular past forms. In addition, the majority of their sentences containing word order errors showed appropriate use of verb morphology. None of the competing accounts of SLI could accommodate all of the findings. In particular, these accounts—or new alternatives —must develop provisions to explain both the earlier acquisition of present tense inflections than past tense inflections and word order errors that seem unrelated to verb morphology.

Specific Language Impairment and Grammatical Morphology

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 1185-1192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Bedore ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Function Analysis ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance ◽  
Finite Verb

Discriminant function analysis was employed to determine if grammatical morpheme production could be used to classify preschool-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typically developing language skills. Three variables were included in the discriminant analysis: a finite verb morpheme composite, a noun morpheme composite, and mean length of utterance in morphemes. The children with SLI and age-matched controls were discriminated with high levels of accuracy, though the three variables did not yield identical classifications. Across two samples of typically developing children and children with SLI, the verb morpheme composite showed sensitivity exceeding 85% and specificity of 100%. In light of these results and growing evidence that problems with finite verb morphology continue into the school years in children with SLI, the verb morpheme composite was considered to hold promise as a clinical marker for SLI.

Grammatical Morphology and the Lexicon in Children With Specific Language Impairment

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 678-689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard ◽  
Carol Miller ◽  
Erika Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Grammatical Morphology ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Related Morphology ◽  
Finite Verb

We examined the use of grammatical morphology by preschool-age English-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) as a function of their lexical diversity. Relative to a group of normally developing (ND) preschoolers, these children's use of finite-verb morphology lagged behind expectations based on the number of different verbs they used. Noun-related morphology fell below expectations based on overall lexical diversity. Differences between the ND children and children with SLI were also seen for the slope of the increases in finite-verb morphology as a function of lexical diversity, with shallower slopes in the SLI data. The findings of this study add to existing evidence suggesting that a measure of finite grammatical-morphology use has promise as a clinical marker of SLI in English.

Predicting tense: finite verb morphology and subject pronouns in the speech of typically-developing children and children with specific language impairment

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
MONIQUE J. CHAREST ◽  
LAURENCE B. LEONARD
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Finite Verb

According to the AGREEMENT/TENSE (Agr/Tns) OMISSION MODEL, children's failure to produce finite verb morphemes represents the selection of an optional infinitive form, in which tense and/or agreement is not specified. When agreement is specified, nominative case is licensed. Following the assumptions of this model, a child's utterance such as She run reflects a failure to specify tense only, given that the subject pronoun shows nominative case. We tested this assumption in two studies through the analysis of spontaneous speech samples from young typically-developing (TD) children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). In Study 1, 15 children were included (TD aged 2;1–3;11, SLI aged 4;0–6;2); in Study 2, 33 children were included (TD aged 2;5–3;11, SLI aged 3;6–6;9). We determined whether there was a relationship between the children's use of past tense -ed and their use of third person singular -s and copula is when nominative case was also used. Because nominative case was used, any failures to produce third person singular -s and copula is should be attributable to tense and not agreement. Such use should therefore be related to the children's use of -ed which presumably hinges on tense only. However, a relationship was not found in the speech of either group of children. This was true both for the children in each group who were consistent in using nominative case pronouns and for those who were not. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.

Lexical Diversity in the Spontaneous Speech of Children With Specific Language Impairment

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 927-937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda J. Owen ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Sample Size ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Developmental Differences ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

The lexical diversity of children with specific language impairment (SLI) (ages 3 years 7 months to 7 years 3 months) was compared to that of normally developing same-age peers and younger normally developing children matched according to mean length of utterance in words (MLUw). Lexical diversity was calculated from spontaneous speech samples using D, a measure that uses repeated calculations of type-token ratio (TTR) to estimate how TTR changes as the speech samples increase in size. When D computations were based on 250-word samples, developmental differences were apparent. For both children with SLI and typically developing children, older subgroups showed higher D scores than younger subgroups, and subgroups with higher MLUws showed higher D scores than subgroups with lower MLUws. Children with SLI did not differ from same-age peers. At lower MLUw levels, children with SLI showed higher D scores than younger typically developing children matched for MLUw. The developmental sensitivity of D notwithstanding, comparisons using 100-utterance samples, in which the number of lexical tokens varied as a function of the children's MLUws, and comparisons between 250- and 500-word samples revealed the possible influence of sample size on this measure. However, analysis of the effect sizes using smaller and larger samples revealed that D is not affected by sample size to the degree seen for more traditional measures of lexical diversity.

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