Utterance Length and Lexical Diversity in Cantonese-Speaking Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment

Two studies of children's conversational language abilities are reported. In the first, mean length of utterance (MLU) and lexical diversity (D) were examined in a group of typically developing Cantonese-speaking children in Hong Kong. Regression analyses indicated a significant linear relation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of speech, language, and hearing research language, and hearing research, 2004-12, Vol.47 (6), p.1396-1410
Main Authors: Klee, Thomas, Stokes, Stephanie F, Wong, Anita M.-Y, Fletcher, Paul, Gavin, William J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Factors
Analysis of Variance
Audiometry, Pure-Tone
Case-Control Studies
Child development
Child Language
Child, Preschool
Children & youth
Chinese language
Cognition
Discriminant Analysis
Female
Foreign Countries
Hong Kong
Humans
Language
Language Acquisition
Language disorders
Language Disorders - physiopathology
Language disorders in children
Language Impairments
Male
Mean Length of Utterance
Random Allocation
Regression Analysis
Reproducibility of Results
Speech Acoustics
Vocabulary
Vocabulary Development
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Summary:Two studies of children's conversational language abilities are reported. In the first, mean length of utterance (MLU) and lexical diversity (D) were examined in a group of typically developing Cantonese-speaking children in Hong Kong. Regression analyses indicated a significant linear relationship between MLU and age (R = .44) and a significant curvilinear relationship between D and age (R = .73) in children age 27-68 months. MLU and D were moderately correlated with each other (r = .23); however, the two measures showed no statistical relationship when the effect of age was partialled out. In a second study, the utterances of Chinese children with specific language impairment (SLI) were found to be significantly shorter and less lexically diverse than typically developing children matched for age but similar to children matched for comprehension level. Discriminant analyses revealed that the combination of age, MLU, and D could be used to accurately differentiate children with SLI from both age-matched and language-matched children. Based on these findings, we hypothesize that these measures can be used jointly as a marker of SLI in Cantonese-speaking children.KEY WORDS: child language development, child language disorders, specific language impairment, lexical diversity, Cantonese, MLU
ISSN:1092-4388
1558-9102
DOI:10.1044/1092-4388(2004/104)