Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-r4mrb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-09T23:08:25.267Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Index of Productive Syntax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Hollis S. Scarborough
Hollis S. Scarborough*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College of CUNY
*
Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College of CUNY, Brooklyn, NY 11210
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A new method for evaluating the grammatical complexity of preschool natural language corpora is introduced. In the Index of Productive Syntax, occurrences of 56 syntactic and morphological forms are counted, yielding a total score and subscores for noun phrases, verb phrases, questions/negations, and sentence structures. Development of the index and analyses of its reliability and age-sensitivity when applied to language samples of 2- to 4-year-olds are described. Some advantages and limitations of the index as a research and clinical instrument are also discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anastasi, A. (1982). Psychological testing (5th ed.). New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bloom, L. (1970). Language development: Form and function in emerging grammars. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bloom, L., Lightbown, P., & Hood, L. (1975). Structure and variation in child language. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 40 (Serial No. 160).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, M. D. S. (1976). Children's first word combinations. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 40 (Serial No. 164).Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, D. (1974). A review of Brown's A first language. Journal of Child Language, 1, 289–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, D., Fletcher, P., & Garman, M. (1976). The grammatical analysis of language disability: A procedure for assessment and remediation. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Dobrich, W. (1988). Phonological development in preschoolers: Learning to speak English by speaking English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Hollingshead, A. B., & Redlich, F. C. (1958). Social class and mental illness. New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klee, T., & Fitzgerald, M. D. (1985). The relation between grammatical development and mean length of utterance in morphemes. Journal of Child Language, 12, 251–269.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, L. (1974). Developmental sentence analysis. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, J. F. (1981). Assessing language production in children. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Miller, J. F., & Chapman, R. S. (1981). The relation between age and mean length of utterance in morphemes. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 29, 154–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rescorla, L., & Schwartz, E. (1988, April). Outcome of specific expressive language delay. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Scarborough, H. S. (1985, April). Measuring syntactic development: Index of productive syntax. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto.Google Scholar
Scarborough, H. S. (1988, December). Language development of children who became dyslexic. Paper presented to the New York Child Language Group, New York.Google Scholar
Scarborough, H. S. (1989). Prediction of reading disability from familial and individual differences. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 101–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarborough, H. S., & Dobrich, W. (1985). Illusory recovery from early language delay. Proceedings of the Wisconsin Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, 6, 90–99.Google Scholar
Scarborough, H. S., Rescorla, L., Tager-Flusberg, H., Fowler, A. E., & Sudhalter, V. (1989). The relation of utterance length to grammatical complexity in normal and language-disordered groups. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Scarborough, H. S., Wyckoff, J., & Davidson, R. (1986). A reconsideration of the relation between chronological age and mean length of utterance. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 29, 394–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar