Syntactic Maturity and Vocabulary Richness of Learning Disabled Children at Four Age Levels

Abstract

This past decade has witnessed an increasing number of studies attending to vocabulary and language maturity. Some of these studies analyzed oral language or written language, while a few included oral and written discourse. Several of the studies that looked at spontaneous oral language were directly related to this research (Ciani 1974, Fox 1970, O'Donnell, Griffin, & Norris 1967). There was a question however whether the findings with normal children would be generalizable to a population of learning disabled children. In a population sample of learning disabled children what is the developmental trend in their language? How does it compare to the trend found in studies with normal children? Are the findings the same when measured by different instruments? Findings are summarized as follows. (1) A syntactic developmental pattern existed as measured by the number of T-units (one main clause and all subordinated clauses) and the word length per T-unit. (2) A comparison of the syntactic developmental trend of learning disabled and normal children revealed that normal children experience periods of rapid growth, while learning disabled children exhibit gradual control of syntax across the four age levels. (3) A vocabulary developmental pattern exists as measured by the corrected type-token ratio and the number of different words spoken. (4) A comparison of the vocabulary developmental trend of normal and learning disabled children revealed that vocabulary increases for both groups with advancing age.