Typically developing Spanish-English bilingual children's production of twelve grammatical morphemes was analyzed for accuracy and described as a function of their English mastery, as indexed by mean length of utterance (MLU). Results revealed positive trends in morpheme accuracy as MLU increased. Despite a large degree of between subject variability, the data demonstrated general patterns that were consistent with previous literature, namely that the rate and trajectory of morpheme acquisition differs from monolingual norms, and that particular morphemes are predictably more and less challenging for bilingual children to produce accurately. MLU "cut-points" were suggested based on functional breaks in accuracy for several morphemes. / text

Children’s utterances have been studied in different languages; however, only a few studies refer to Swedish. The aim of the present study is to describe utterance types, subordinate clauses and utterance length for a group of three and four year old Swedish children without known functional impairments. The study included 29 children, 17 girls and 12 boys, in a larger city in the south-east of Sweden. The children, all native Swedish speakers, were aged 3;0 to 4;11. Sound recordings were made during a playing session with one of the authors in the children’s day care centers.The utterances were divided into the categories elliptical responses, incomplete and partly unintelligible utterances, imitative utterances and independent utterances. Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) was calculated for the 50 first independent utterances. Subordinate clauses were classified and counted and placement of the sentence adverb was studied. Elliptical responses were frequently used. Incomplete or partly unintelligible utterances were relatively common, but imitative utterances were rare. Subordinate clauses were used by 23 of the 29 children. Relative subordinate clauses were the most common type, and were used across the age range. Most of the children placed the sentence adverbial correctly. The children had utterances ranging from one to 23 words, and the most common utterance length was four words. The MLU ranged from 2.36 to 7.04. Frequent use of subordinate clauses resulted in a higher MLU. The older children used subordinate clauses more frequently and had a lower percentage of elliptical responses. The MLU had a tendency to increase with age. The great variety in the results shown in the present study, can be explained by the fact that children aged three and four are in a process of developing their language. Children with a more frequent use of subordinate clauses had higher MLU values, suggesting a relation between language complexity and MLU. The results show that MLU is a reliable measure of children’s language level in the ages three and four years. / Barns yttranden har undersökts i flera studier på olika språk, men det finns endast ett fåtal studier som berör det svenska språket. Syftet med föreliggande studie är att beskriva yttrandetyper, bisatser och yttrandelängd hos en grupp tre- och fyraåriga svenska barn utan kända funktionsnedsättningar. I studien deltog 29 barn, 17 flickor och 12 pojkar, i en större tätort i sydöstra Sverige. Barnen var i åldern 3;0 till 4;11 och hade svenska som modersmål. Ljudupptagning skedde under samtal i en leksituation med en av uppsatsförfattarna på barnens förskola. Yttrandena delades in i kategorierna elliptiska svarsyttranden, ofullständiga eller delvis oförståeliga yttranden, imitativa yttranden och självständiga yttranden. Yttrandemedellängd (eng: Mean Length of Utterance, förkortat MLU) räknades ut för de 50 första självständiga yttrandena. Förekomst av olika bisatstyper och placering av satsadverbial i bisatser undersöktes också. Elliptiska svarsyttranden var vanliga hos barnen. Ofullständiga eller delvis oförståeliga yttranden förekom i viss utsträckning, och imitativa yttranden var ovanliga. Bisatser förekom hos 23 av de 29 barnen. ”Som” var den vanligaste bisatsinledaren och förekom i hela åldersgruppen. De flesta barnen placerade satsadverbialet korrekt i bisatserna. Barnens yttranden var mellan ett och 23 ord långa, och den vanligaste yttrandelängden var fyra ord. MLU varierade från 2,36 till 7,04. Frekvent användning av bisatser gav högre MLU. De äldre barnen använde fler bisatser och hade en mindre andel elliptiska svarsyttranden. MLU hade en viss tendens att öka med ålder. Barn i åldern tre till fyra år befinner sig i en språklig utvecklingsfas, vilket speglas i den stora variationen i resultaten. Att barn som använde många bisatser hade högt MLU tyder på ett samband mellan språklig förmåga och yttrandelängd. Detta visar i sin tur att MLU är ett tillförlitligt mått på barns språkliga nivå i åldern tre till fyra år.

Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) is a standardized language sample analysis procedure that uses complete sentences to evaluate and score a child’s use of standard American-English grammatical rules. Automated DSS software can potentially increase efficiency and decrease the time needed for DSS analysis. This study examines the accuracy of one automated DSS software program, DSSA Version 2.0, compared to manual DSS scoring on previously collected language samples from 30 children between the ages of 2;5 and 7;11 (years;months). The overall accuracy of DSSA 2.0 was 86%. Additionally, the present study sought to determine the relationship between DSS, DSSA Version 2.0, the mean length of utterance (MLU), and age. MLU is a measure of linguistic ability in children, and is a widely used indicator of language impairment. This study found that MLU and DSS are both strongly correlated with age and these correlations are statistically significant, r = .605, p < .001 and r = .723, p < .001, respectively. In addition, MLU and DSSA were also strongly correlated with age and these correlations were statistically significant, r = .605, p < .001 and r = .669, p < .001, respectively. The correlation between MLU and DSS was high and statistically significant r = .873, p < .001, indicating that the correlation between MLU and DSS is not simply an artifact of both measures being correlated with age. Furthermore, the correlation between MLU and DSSA was high, r = .794, suggesting that the correlation between MLU and DSSA is not simply an artifact of both variables being correlated with age. Lastly, the relationship between DSS and age while controlling for MLU was moderate, but still statistically significant r = .501, p = .006. Therefore, DSS appears to add information beyond MLU.

The purpose of this analysis was to define norms for grammatical morpheme development in Spanish for Spanish-English bilingual children ages 4;0-7;6. This study uses secondary data analysis based on two existing datasets. Participants included 334 Spanish-English bilingual children that were recruited from school districts in Texas, Utah, and Pennsylvania. Grammatical morpheme accuracy was determined by performance on the BESA (Bilingual English Spanish Assessment) (Peña, Gutiérrez-Clellen et al., in preparation). Mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) data was collected from language samples. The average percent accuracy of grammatical morphemes was calculated and analyzed as a function of MLUw in Spanish. Results show that the percentage of accurately produced morphemes has a general upward trend as MLUw increases. Clinical and research implications are discussed. / text

A variety of tools have been developed to assist in the quantification and analysis of naturalistic language samples. In recent years, computer technology has been employed in language sample analysis. This study compares a new automated index, Scoring Sentences Developmentally (SSD), to two existing measures. Eighty samples from three corpora were manually analyzed using DSS and MLU and the processed by the automated software. Results show all three indices to be highly correlated, with correlations ranging from .62 to .98. The high correlations among scores support further investigation of the psychometric characteristics of the SSD software to determine its clinical validity and reliability. Results of this study suggest that SSD has the potential to compliment other analysis procedures in assessing the language development of young children.