Analysis of Language Mid-Semester Test Flashcards
What is MLUm a measurement of and how do you calculate it?
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
Name the four sentence types
Declarative - statement
Interrogative - Question
Negatives - Negation -No/Can’t/Don’t/Won’t
Imperatives - demand
What are the four narrative types?
Personal Narrative
Narrative Retell
Procedural/Expository - directions
Story Generation
What is NDW, what does it indicate, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?
Number of different words
Measure of vocabulary diversity
Counting the number of different root words
What is NTW, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?
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.
What is TTR%, what does it measure, and how do you calculate it?
Type Token Ratio
Number of different words divided by number of total words
Measure of vocabulary diversity
What is WPM, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?
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
What is % Maze Words, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?
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
What is EW, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?
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
What is EU, what does it measure and how do you calculate it?
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.
What components are included in the Parser
Phonological decoding and lexical selection
Grammatical decoding
What components are included in the conceptualiser
Discourse processing + inferred intention
Monitoring
Message generation + communication intention
What components are included in the Formulator
Grammatical encoding
+ Surface structure
Phonological encoding
What is the conceptualiser responsible for
Determining the intention behind communication, generating the meaning of the message
Interpreting supralinguistics (facial expression, gesture, body language etc.)
Self-monitoring
What is the Formulator responsible for?
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
What could a breakdown at the conceptualiser appear like
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
What could a breakdown at the Formulator look like?
Word finding difficulties
Small lexicon
Reduced sentence length
Less complex language
Phonological sound errors - wrong sounds mapped in lexicon
> low MLUm, NDW
What is the Parser responsible for?
Recognition and comprehension of language. Very fast - makes predictions throughout process.
What could a breakdown at the Parser look like?
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
What is the articulator responsible for?
Execution of the motor plan derived from the formulator
What could narratives with a language disorder look like?
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
Name the story grammar components
Introduction
Character Development
Mental States
Referencing
Conflict resolution
Cohesion
Conclusion
What are the elements of narrative macrostruture?
The overall structure of a narrative
Initiating event
Character development
Problem/Solution
Setting
Emotional response/reason
Conclusion
Cohesion
Referencing (pronouns etc.)
Story grammar
What is the importance of narratives
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
