Analysis of Language Mid-Semester Test

Question 1

What is MLUm a measurement of and how do you calculate it?

Answer 1

A measure of syntactic complexity.

Measured by counting the number of morphemes in the sample and dividing by the number of utterances. At least 50 utterances

Question 2

Name the four sentence types

Answer 2

Declarative - statement
Interrogative - Question
Negatives - Negation -No/Can’t/Don’t/Won’t
Imperatives - demand

Question 3

What are the four narrative types?

Answer 3

Personal Narrative
Narrative Retell
Procedural/Expository - directions
Story Generation

Question 4

What is NDW, what does it indicate, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?

Answer 4

Number of different words

Measure of vocabulary diversity

Counting the number of different root words

Question 5

What is NTW, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?

Answer 5

Number of total words

Measures total amount of talking. Can be useful with NDW to indicate how diverse word use is.

The total number of words.

Question 6

What is TTR%, what does it measure, and how do you calculate it?

Answer 6

Type Token Ratio

Number of different words divided by number of total words

Measure of vocabulary diversity

Question 7

What is WPM, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?

Answer 7

Words per minute

The rate of speech. Could indicate if speech is particularly fast or slow. Measure of fluency

Total number of words divided by the duration of the sample

Question 8

What is % Maze Words, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?

Answer 8

The percentage of maze words/total words

Measure of fluency. How many umms, ahhs, filled pauses are in the sample. Quantifies disfluency

Total number of maze words / total words x 100

Question 9

What is EW, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?

Answer 9

Word Errors

Measure of lexical and word retrieval accuracy

A tally of the number of words with an error. When a word is used incorrectly and it is clear what the target word should have been

Question 10

What is EU, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?

Answer 10

Utterance errors

Measure of grammatical encoding, and potentially a measure of word retrieval

A tally of the number of utterances with an error. When the utterance is not grammatically correct but the error cannot be associated with a specific word. More detailed analysis needed.

Question 11

What components are included in the Parser

Answer 11

Phonological decoding and lexical selection

Grammatical decoding

Question 12

What components are included in the conceptualiser

Answer 12

Discourse processing + inferred intention

Monitoring

Message generation + communication intention

Question 13

What components are included in the Formulator

Answer 13

Grammatical encoding

+ Surface structure

Phonological encoding

Question 14

What is the conceptualiser responsible for

Answer 14

Determining the intention behind communication, generating the meaning of the message
Interpreting supralinguistics (facial expression, gesture, body language etc.)
Self-monitoring

Question 15

What is the Formulator responsible for?

Answer 15

Turning the message into a linguistic representation
Grammatical encoding - finding words, putting them in order
phonological encoding - finding and deciding on the order

Grammatical encoding - lemma selection triggers syntactic building - building follows the plan of the intention (declarative, question etc.)

Phonological encoding - relies on correct phonological information being stored in the lexicon. Internal cognitive plan of how the sounds will be produced

Question 16

What could a breakdown at the conceptualiser appear like

Answer 16

The conceptualiser has high attentional demands (monitoring self and others’ speech). Perhaps not being aware of errors, dysfluency, wrongly received message

Difficulty with narrative ideas
High % maze words

Question 17

What could a breakdown at the Formulator look like?

Answer 17

Word finding difficulties
Small lexicon
Reduced sentence length
Less complex language
Phonological sound errors - wrong sounds mapped in lexicon

> low MLUm, NDW

Question 18

What is the Parser responsible for?

Answer 18

Recognition and comprehension of language. Very fast - makes predictions throughout process.

Question 19

What could a breakdown at the Parser look like?

Answer 19

Difficulty learning from the incoming speech signal
Words taking longer to be added to the lexicon, or are only partially added
Difficulty following long or complex sentences from others
Missing information in conversation

Question 20

What is the articulator responsible for?

Answer 20

Execution of the motor plan derived from the formulator

Question 21

What could narratives with a language disorder look like?

Answer 21

Less overall words (shorter) - NTW
Smaller number of different words - NDW
Increased syntax and morphological errors - error codes and emissions
Poorer use of cohesive structures and conjunctions
Increased mazes

Question 21

Name the story grammar components

Answer 21

Introduction
Character Development
Mental States
Referencing
Conflict resolution
Cohesion
Conclusion

Question 21

What are the elements of narrative macrostruture?

Answer 21

The overall structure of a narrative

Initiating event
Character development
Problem/Solution
Setting
Emotional response/reason
Conclusion
Cohesion
Referencing (pronouns etc.)
Story grammar

Question 21

What is the importance of narratives

Answer 21

Decontextualised language - often not in present context
Relies a lot on memory, lots of language and planning
Follows a set structure
Relies on language to set the scene
Requires explicit vocabulary and precision of pronouns (pronomial reference)
Needs strong command of temporal and causal connectors
Explains character emotions and motives/reasons behind behaviour

Question 22

What is lexical parallelism

Answer 22

The use of a repeated word or structure to link sentences or concepts together throughout a narrative
eg. If i was a butterfly, I would flutter. If i was a caterpillar, I would crawl.

Question 23

What does FANBOYS stand for

Answer 23

F - for
A - and
N - nor
B - but
O - or
Y - yet
S - so