Sarita Eisenberg

The development of infinitives from three to five

This study investigated the form of infinitival sentences produced by young children and their knowledge of the control properties of this sentence form. Twenty-five children between the ages of 3;7 and 5;4 participated in a story completion task designed to elicit infinitive sentences and in an act-out comprehension task. Although the infinitive form was productive for even the youngest children in this study, development of this form was not complete even for the five-year-olds, nor did any child demonstrate adult knowledge of control. In addition, two competing claims regarding order of acquisition (that of Limber, 1973, and Hyams, 1985) were evaluated.

Production of infinitival object complements in the conversational speech of 5-year-old children with language-impairment*

The infinitive productions of eight 5-year-old children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) were compared with the infinitive productions of 25 3to 5-year-old children with normally-developing language (NL). The mean number of infinitives was the same for the SLI group as for the NL group. However, individual children with SLI produced no or few infinitives or showed limited productivity for this sentence form with different main verbs. It was not possible to conclude that infinitives are problematic for all children with SLI, as has been reported for verb inflections. Rather, difficulty with this sentence form seems to be an individual difference among children with SLI.

Control and Coreference in Early Child Language.

This study investigated the relationship between control and coreference using an act-out task involving 81 children ranging in age from 3.1 to 8.0 and eight adults ranging in age from 30 to 55. The results replicated previous findings in revealing five developmental stages in childrens interpretation of PRO, an empty pronominal element. A significant relationship was observed in the patterns of childrens interpretation of forwards sentences containing PRO and those containing overt pronouns. However, there was no relationship in the development of restrictions on control and restrictions on coreference.

Investigating Children's Language: A Comparison of Conversational Sampling and Elicited Production

This report compared production of infinitival object complements during conversational language sampling to production on an elicitation task. Subjects included 25 children between the ages of 3;7 and 5;4. The children produced more two-noun infinitives and produced infinitives with more main verbs on the elicitation task. In the conversational samples, the children produced infinitives almost exclusively with early-appearing main verbs. These findings suggest that conversational language sampling may underestimate childrens grammatical knowledge.

What Works in Therapy: Further Thoughts on Improving Clinical Practice for Children With Language Disorders

PURPOSE In this response to Kamhi (2014), the author reviewed research about what does and does not help children with language impairment (LI) to learn grammatical features and considered how that research might inform clinical practice. METHOD The author reviewed studies about therapy dose (the number of learning episodes per session) and dose frequency (how learning episodes are spaced over time) and also reviewed studies about dose form, including input characteristics and therapy strategies. CONCLUSION Although the research is limited, it offers implications for how clinicians do therapy. Children with LI need many learning episodes clustered together within sessions but spread out over time across sessions. Input must be grammatical and consistent while providing varied exemplars of the target features. Learning episodes should actively engage children in producing utterances with the target form, but only after they have had the chance to hear some utterances with that feature. The author suggests a session plan that starts with a structured activity and then incorporates the target form into an embedded activity such as storytelling.

Production of infinitives by 5-year-old children with language-impairment on an elicitation task

The infinitive productions of eight 5-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) on an elicited production task were compared with the infinitive productions of 25 3- to 5-year-old children with normally-developing language (NL). The basic infinitive structure itself did not seem to be a problem for these children since all eight of the children with SLI produced infinitival complements with at least five different main verbs. However, other aspects of infinitive sentences which must be learned as a lexical property of specific verbs appeared to present more difficulty for some of the children with SLI. Individual children with SLI showed limited or no subcategorization for ditransitivity (production of both an NP and an infinitival complement) or for infinitives with a lexical complement subject. In contrast to previous reports, only one of the children with SLI omitted the infinitive marker to more than once. Reference errors were consistent with what has previously been reported for NL children.

Interpretation of relative clauses by young children: another look*

Interpretation of relative clauses sentences was investigated by having sixteen children between the ages of 3;5 and 4;6 act out sentences within four conditions that varied the number of potential referents for each noun within the sentence. No difference in interpretation accuracy was found between felicitous and infelicitous conditions or between biased and neutral conditions. This result raises problems for the view that children of this age know the pragmatic principles for interpreting relative clauses.

The Diagnostic Accuracy of Two Tense Measures for Identifying 3-Year-Olds With Language Impairment

PURPOSE The authors of this study investigated the diagnostic accuracy of the Finite Verb Morphology Composite (FVMC; Bedore & Leonard, 1998) and the Tense and Agreement Productivity Score (TAPS; Hadley & Short, 2005) in identifying 3-year-olds with language impairment (LI). METHOD Eighteen pairs of 3-year-olds with and without LI participated in the current study. The FVMC and the TAPS were computed from 100- and 50-utterance language samples. RESULTS The FVMC and TAPS demonstrated higher diagnostic accuracy in the 100-utterance samples than in the 50-utterance samples. For 100-utterance samples, when childrens age or severity was not considered, the FVMC showed a slight advantage over the TAPS in diagnostic accuracy. However, when childrens age or severity was considered, the opposite pattern was observed. CONCLUSION Both the FVMC and TAPS can be used to differentiate 3-year-olds with and without LI. To reliably identify 3-year-olds with LI by using tense measures, language samples with at least 100 utterances are recommended.

Sample Length Affects the Reliability of Language Sample Measures in 3-Year-Olds: Evidence From Parent-Elicited Conversational Samples

PURPOSE The goal of this study was to investigate the extent to which sample length affected the reliability of total number of words (TNW), number of different words (NDW), and mean length of C-units in morphemes (MLCUm) in parent-elicited conversational samples for 3-year-olds. METHOD Participants were sixty 3-year-olds. A 22-min language sample was collected from each child during free play with the parent in the laboratory. Samples of 1, 3, 7, and 10 min were extracted from the 22-min samples. TNW, NDW, and MLCUm were computed from each shorter sample and the 22-min sample. TNW and NDW were adjusted by number of minutes for comparisons. The differences and correlations between each shorter sample cut and the 22-min sample on MLCUm and adjusted TNW and NDW were computed. RESULTS The shorter samples and the 22-min samples significantly differed in adjusted TNW and NDW, but not in MLCUm. TNW reached an acceptable reliability level (i.e., r = .90) in 7-min samples. NDW and MLCUm approached the acceptable reliability level (rs = .88) in 7-min samples and reached it in 10-min samples. CONCLUSION For conversational language samples with similar collection procedures, samples of 7 to 10 min are desirable for calculating TNW, NDW, and MLCUm in 3-year-olds.

Sample Size for Measuring Grammaticality in Preschool Children From Picture-Elicited Language Samples

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a shorter language sample elicited with fewer pictures (i.e., 7) would yield a percent grammatical utterances (PGU) score similar to that computed from a longer language sample elicited with 15 pictures for 3-year-old children. METHOD Language samples were elicited by asking forty 3-year-old children with varying language skills to talk about pictures in response to prompts. PGU scores were computed for each of two 7-picture sets and for the full set of 15 pictures. RESULTS PGU scores for the two 7-picture sets did not differ significantly from, and were highly correlated with, PGU scores for the full set and with each other. Agreement for making pass-fail decisions between each 7-picture set and the full set and between the two 7-picture sets ranged from 80% to 100%. CONCLUSION The current study suggests that the PGU measure is robust enough that it can be computed on the basis of 7, at least in 3-year-old children whose language samples were elicited using similar procedures.