Document Type

Article

Language

eng

Format of Original

11 p.

Publication Date

10-2011

Publisher

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Source Publication

Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools

Source ISSN

0161-1461

Original Item ID

doi: 10.1044/0161-1461(2011/10-0029)

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to test Bedore and Leonard's (1998) proposal that a verb morpheme composite may hold promise as a clinical marker for specific language impairment (SLI) in English speakers and serve as an accurate basis for the classification of children with and without SLI beyond the preschool level.

Method: The language transcripts of 50 school-age children with SLI (Mage = 7;9 [years;months]) and 50 age-matched typically developing peers (Mage = 7;9) were analyzed. Following the Bedore and Leonard (1998) procedure, 3 variables were measured: a finite verb morpheme composite, a noun morpheme composite, and mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm).

Results: Overall findings indicated that neither grammatical morpheme composite alone adequately discriminated the groups at this developmental level. However, combining the verb and noun grammatical morpheme composite measures with MLUm resulted in good discriminant accuracy in classifying subgroups of the youngest children with and without SLI in the school-age sample.

Conclusion: Verb morphology alone is not a useful clinical marker of SLI in school-age children. Potential explanations for these findings and ideas for future research are discussed.

Comments

Published version. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools , Volume 42 ( October 2011), DOI: 10.1044/0161-1461(2011/10-0029). © 2011 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Used with permission.

The Marquette author, Maura Jones Moyle, was associated with University of Wisconsin- Madison by the time this article was published.

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