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Language Sample Analysis Nova Southeastern University

2 Language Sample Analysis Section A: MLU and Brown’s Stage of Development

3 Language Sample Analysis

MLU & Standard Deviation

Alexis’s Stage Based on Brown’s Stages of Development Stage 3: Modalities of the Simple Sentence Age: 31-34 Months MLU: 2.5-3

4 Language Sample Analysis Section B: Analyzing Content Categories

5 Language Sample Analysis

6 Language Sample Analysis Section C: Vocabulary Diversity and Type-Token Ration (TTR)

The computed Type-Token Ratio(TTR) for Alexis is 0.55. Per Templin’s analysis for a 5year-old, the normed TTR is 0.46. Alexis’s value of 0.55 indicates that she has a vocabulary that is more diverse than would be expected for the number of words used in the 100 utterances. Alexis’s proximity to the mean, within one Standard Deviation, in both the number of different words used and the total number of words, implies that she is within normal limits. However,

7 Language Sample Analysis she is only coding for 62% of the semantic categories, with the remaining categories coming from Conversational Devices and Communication Routines. The values obtained in this analysis align with Alexis’s pattern of language acquisition, in that it is atypical. Her diversity of language, although higher than the normed values, is not comprised of the all of Brown’s Sematic roles, which are found in children stages I-III. If mastery is established at 90% use, her reduced use of these fundamental Stage I-III sematic roles implies that there is a problem with semantic acquisition and coding, rather than vocabulary acquisition alone.

8 Language Sample Analysis Section D: Analyzing Grammatical Morphemes

In the obtained sample, the grammatical morphemes present include –ing, plural -s, in, on, regular past tense –ed, regular third person singular, articles: a, an, the, contractible copula, contractible auxiliary, uncontractible copula, uncontractible auxiliary and irregular third person singular. These were all obligatory morphemes in the language sample. Alexis exhibited mastery of –ing, in, on, and the contractible copula with 100% use. She was able to use the plural -s 86% of the time, and the articles a, an, the 78% of the time.

9 Language Sample Analysis Alexis’s use and acquisition of Brown’s grammatical markers is not the typical acquisition pattern. Her mastery of –ing and in, on are typically acquired in Stage II, while the contractible copula is mastered in Late Stage V. Her use of the plural –s is found in Stage II, while her use of articles a, an, the is found in Late Stage V. She is not progressing in the typical fashion of grammatical morpheme development and mastery, but has skipped stages as she has progressed. In Brown’s progression, the acquisition process moves along in a sequential manner, with simpler processes, in speech production and cognition, being mastered first. Normal language acquisition also makes allowances for use of a particular morpheme, if not mastered, as a child is learning a more advanced morphological concept. This would be reflected by a more diverse spread of Brown’s morphemes, with use in some of the categories and mastery in others. Although Alexis does use more advanced grammatical morphemes, like the uncontractible copula, her lack of mastery shows that she does not fully understand its application. This lack of pattern in her mastery of grammatical morphemes supports that she is not following a developmental sequence, and her grammatical morpheme language acquisition process is atypical in its nature.

10 Language Sample Analysis Section E: Analyzing Structural Stages of Syntax

11 Language Sample Analysis

12 Language Sample Analysis

13 Language Sample Analysis Alexis’s language sample contained many instances of the structural stages of syntax, including negation, Yes/No questions, Wh – questions, noun phrase elaborations and verb phrase elaborations. However, there were no instances of complex sentences. Her usage of these elements exhibited similarities with her grammatical morpheme mastery, centering around Stages II, III, Early Stage 4 and Late Stage V. Alexis used the structural stage of negation 4 times in the transcript, with 75% of the utterances falling in the Early Stage I to Early Stage II categories and one instance of Stage III. Alexis had 10 instances of Yes/No Questions, with their number split between Stages I-III and Early Stage IV- Late Stage V. She exhibited 4 instances of Wh- questions, again the values were split between Early Stage I and Late Stage I/Early Stage II and Stage II. The most used syntactical categories were noun phrase elaborations and verb phrase elaborations, with these distributions similarly populated within Stages I/II and III/EIV. In reviewing Alexis’s data, as shown on the Summary Form, it is noted that there is a lack of variability in her stages, as would be expected of a child of 5 years. It is thought that this variability implies that she is mastering the use of different structures as she progresses in the stages in her syntactical development. However, in looking at the information present on her summary form, the lack of variability may indicate that she is not maintaining and developing previous structures in her progression of more advanced concepts, and perhaps illuminate the abnormal way she is developing these structures.

14 Language Sample Analysis Section F: Use (Pragmatic Language) Categories

15 Language Sample Analysis Section G: Diagnostic Statement Based on the findings of Alexis’s standardized PLS-5 results and the comprehensive review of her language sample, Alexis has a moderate/moderately-severe developmental language disorder. Her expressive language exhibits difficulties in form, content and use. She displays a pattern of linguistic behaviors below her chronological age of 5, developing in manner that does not support normal language acquisition. Her performance on her language sample analysis, yielded a MLU of 2.56, placing Alexis in Stage III morphologically, as shown by the reduced length of her utterances and the restricted use of grammatical morphemes in 62% of obligatory cases. Although Alexis was able to produces some syntactical structures like Yes/No Questions and Negations, her syntactic production was limited in its variability, encompassing a narrow range of stages which supports her lower linguistic developmental stage. Areas of strength include Alexis’s vocabulary diversity and overall intelligibility of her speech, although this assessment is based on her linguistic stage and not her chronological age....