Measuring productive syntactic abilities in Mandarin-speaking children in Taiwan

This study aimed to develop a fine-grained measure for evaluating syntactic abilities in Mandarin-speaking children for educational and clinical purposes as a supplement to MLU. In total, 99 typically developing children, aged 2;0 to 5;11, living in Taipei, Taiwan, participated in this study. Sponta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Clinical linguistics & phonetics 2024-11, Vol.38 (11), p.1067-1084
Main Authors: Cheung, Hin-Tat, Lin, Chia-Hui, Chang, Chien-Ju
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adverbials
Age differences
Case marking
Child Language
Child, Preschool
Children
Classifiers
Female
Humans
Language
Language Development
Language Tests
Linguistics
Male
Mandarin
Mean length of utterance
Noun phrases
Reproducibility of Results
Sentence structure
Serial verbs
Speech-language pathologists
Syntax
Taiwan
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Summary:This study aimed to develop a fine-grained measure for evaluating syntactic abilities in Mandarin-speaking children for educational and clinical purposes as a supplement to MLU. In total, 99 typically developing children, aged 2;0 to 5;11, living in Taipei, Taiwan, participated in this study. Spontaneous language samples were elicited in free-play situations. The first 100 intelligible utterances were coded with a newly developed scheme: the Mandarin Assessment of Productive Syntax-Revised (MAPS-R). For the examination of concurrent validity, MLU was also computed. Significant age-related differences were observed in both MLU and MAPS-R scores. Strong correlations were found between MLU and MAPS-R scores, confirming the validity of MAPS-R as a measure of syntactic development. MAPS-R further revealed that Mandarin-speaking children expanded noun phrases with the general classifier 'GE' very early on, followed by a locative expression. Verb expansions began with resultative complements and aspect markers. Sentences with complex predication structures, such as serial verbs/pivotal sentences, were still not widely used when the MLU value is below 4.5. The study showed that MAPS-R is a reliable and valid measure that can provide a rich profile of the syntactic development of Mandarin-speaking children. It can be a useful reference for speech therapists to set a baseline for developing language intervention plans and to monitor their outcome.
ISSN:0269-9206
1464-5076
1464-5076
DOI:10.1080/02699206.2024.2302549