Predictors of MLU: semantic and morphological developments

Pamela Rosenthal Rollins · Catherine Elizabeth Snow · John B. Willett

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Language Development and Disorders Reading and Literacy Development Child and Animal Learning Development

Abstract

In the past decade the existence of individual differences in both rate and route of language development has been widely accepted. Some between-child differences are observed in the synchro nization of morphological with semantic skills. These differences are obscured by portmanteau measures like MLU. The purpose of this paper is to explore semantic and morphological predictors of MLU in order to identify individual variation in language development in a fairly large number of typically developing children. To accomplish this goal, we identified two additional variables: NPSAT, a measure of morphological skill, and MLU cw, a measure of utterance length in content words. A growth modelling strategy was used to identify both 'within-child' and 'between-child' differences in longitudinal data from 36 children. We found that typically developing children indeed use different strategies in lengthening their utterances. We therefore recommend caution in the use of MLU to 'language match' children when doing research on early language development.

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1973A First Language 1974A First Language: The Early Stages 1970Language development: Form and function in emerging grammars 1982A growth curve approach to the measurement of change.1988From First Words to Grammar: Individual Differences and Dissociable Mechanisms 1973A cross-sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in child speech 1990Index of Productive Syntax 1981The Relation between Age and Mean Length of Utterance in Morphemes

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2003The emergence of grammar: early verbs and beyond 2002Grammatical Morpheme Production in 4-Year-Old Children 2012How Do Children Acquire Early Grammar and Build Multiword Utterances? A Corpus Study of French Children Aged 2 to 4 2001Use of cognitive state predicates by language-impaired children 2015Language and social competence in typically developing children and late talkers between 18 and 35 months of age 2018Length of Utterance, in Morphemes or in Words?: MLU3-w, a Reliable Measure of Language Development in Early Basque

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