A Study on the Using of Endings (“Eomi”) of 3- to 5-Year-Old Children in Spontaneous Language Samples

Abstract

Objectives: Considering that language development is the development of language use ability, endings, which are essential for sentence construction, can be said to be a good indicator of language development as well as grammatical development. This study attempted to systematically and comprehensively examine the overall and subcategory use of endings in spontaneous speech for children aged 3 to 5 whose syntactic skills are rapidly developing. Methods: Language samples containing 50 utterances were collected from a total of 150 children aged 3 to 5 years (50 in each age group) through a semi-structured procedure. ‘Eomi’s are classified into four subcategories: prefinal Eomi (PE), Sentence-closing Eomi (SE), Connecting Eomi (CE), Transformative Eomi (TE). The number of total Eomi (NTE) use, the number of different Eomi (NDE) of overall Eomi & all subcategories of Eomi were analyzed. Results: The NTE & NDE of overall Eomi and all subcategories except SE significantly increased between the 3-year-old group and two older groups, but not between two older groups. Regression analysis demonstrated that the NDE of final Eomi and the NTE of CE significantly explained chronological age in the 3-year-old group. Conclusion: It was confirmed that NDE along with NTE of overall and all subcategories of Eomi consistently increased actively between the ages of 3 and 4. Also NDE along with NTE of Eomi should be considered in language assessment and intervention.