MLU

Question 1

What are morphemes?

Answer 1

Smallest unit of language which has meaning

Question 2

What 2 main types of morphemes?

Answer 2

1. Free morpheme: Stands alone with meaning

2. Bound morphemes: Added to morphemes to change meaning

Question 3

What are the further types of Morphemes?

Answer 3

1. Lexical: ordinary nouns/verbs carrying content
2. Functional: conjunction, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs
3. Derivational: make new words from different grammatical category
4. Inflectional: indicate grammatical function via suffixes attached

Question 4

How are inflectional morphemes used in English?

Answer 4

1. Tense
2. Number
3. Possession
4. Comparison

Question 5

What is the difference between morphemes and syllables?

Answer 5

Morphemes: division based on meaning
Syllables: division based on pronunciation

Question 6

What types of word predominate a young child’s vocab?

Answer 6

Content words

Question 7

What does Morphology allow us to do?

Answer 7

Estimate the language complexity of young children

Question 8

What do we use to estimate language development?

Answer 8

Utterance length (uninterrupted “chain” of language)

Question 9

What is the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) used for?

Answer 9

Valid and reliable way to score a child’s language ability

Question 10

Usually how many utterances are required for a representative sampling of oral language?

Answer 10

50-100

Question 11

What is the Limitation of using MLU?

Answer 11

Quantitative not qualitative

Question 12

What is a significantly lower-than-expected MLU a marker of?

Answer 12

Language disorder

Question 13

What is the difference in calculating MLU in adult speech as compared to children speech?

Answer 13

Young children often say words together as if they were one word

Question 14

Describe the acquisition of Eng morphemes.

Answer 14

19-28m: present progressive -ing
27-30m: in
27-33m: on
25-46m: irregular past tense
26-40m: possessive 's
28-46m: uncontractible copula
26-48m: articles
28-50m: regular third person -s
29-48m: uncontractible auxiliary
29-49m: contractible copula
30-50m: contractible auxiliary

Question 15

How do the children combine words to form sentences?

Answer 15

early 2-3 word phrases categorised by semantic relations (Action + object; Agent + action)

• Questions
• Negative sentences
• Conjoining and embedding

Question 16

Describe Brown’s Stages of Syntactic Development.

Answer 16

stage I (12-26m): 1.0-2.0 - linear semantic rules + beginning to form 2w combi
stage II (27-30m): 2.0-2.5 -  morphological development + -ing, prepositions, plural -s
stage III (31-34m): 2.5-3.0 - sentence-form development + irregular past tense verbs, possessive -s, uncontractible copular be verbs
stage IV (35-40m): 3.0-3.75 - embedding of sentence elements + articles, regular past tense -ed, third person singular -s
stage V (41-46m): 3.75-4.5 - joining of clauses + third person irregular, uncontractible auxiliary verb, contractible copula be verbs, contractible auxiliary be verbs

Question 17

What is the SG Pro-Ed Chart (1996)?

Answer 17

Adaptation of the Pro-ed speech and language development chart (1993) for children acquiring singaporean english

Question 18

Describe the speech intelligibility milestones

Answer 18

18m: 25%
2y: 50% by others; 75% by parents
3y: 75% by others; 100% by parents
4y: 100%

Question 19

What do we count when transcribing utterances?

Answer 19

• plural -s
• past tense -ed
• present participle -ing
• third person regular tense
• possessive -s
• contractions

Question 20

What do we not count when transcribing utterances?

Answer 20

• false starts, reformulations or repetitions
• compound words, reduplications and proper nouns
• irregular past tense and plurals
• diminutives and catenatives
• fillers