The Leading-Edge: The Significance of Sentence Disruptions in the Development of Grammar
Publication: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Volume 44, Number 5
Pages 1131-1143
Abstract
This research explored the relationship between sentence disruptions and the length and complexity of sentences spoken by children developing grammar. The study was cross-sectional in design and used samples of naturalistic, conversational interaction between 26 typically developing children (ages 2;6 to 4;0) and a primary caregiver. The active, declarative sentences produced by these children were coded for the presence of disruption, length in morphemes and words, and clausal complexity. The results showed that, for the majority of the children, disrupted sentences tended to be longer and more complex than fluent sentences. The magnitude of the differences in length and complexity was positively correlated with the children's grammatical development, as measured by the Index of Productive Syntax. It was also found that differences between the average complexity of disrupted versus fluent sentences increased with grammatical development even when sentence length was held constant. As grammatical development proceeded, disrupted sentences were more apt to be sentences on the "leading-edge" of the child's production capacity. Although these more advanced grammatical structures are part of the child's grammatical competence, the child cannot produce these sentences without an increased risk of processing difficulty. The results are congruent with proposals concerning the incremental and procedural nature of adult sentence production.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Bernstein, N. (1981). Are there constraints on childhood disfluency? Journal of Fluency Disorder, 6, 341–350.
Bernstein Ratner, N., & Costa Sih, C. (1987). Effects of gradual increases in sentence length and complexity on children's dysfluency. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 52, 278–287.
Bloom, L., Tackeff, J., & Lahey, M. (1984). Learning to speak in complement constructions. Journal of Child Language, 11, 391–406.
Bock, K., & Levelt, W. (1994). Language production: Grammatical encoding. In M. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 945–984). San Diego: Academic Press.
Brown, R. (1973). A first language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of a theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Colburn, N., & Mysak, E. (1982). Developmental disfluency and emerging grammar: II. Co-occurrence of disfluency with specified semantic-syntactic structures. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 25, 421–427.
Garrett, M. (1984). The organization of processing structure for language production. D. Caplan, A. LeCours, & A. Smith (Eds.), Biological perspectives on language (pp. 172–193). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hadley, P. (1998). Early verb-related vulnerability among children with specific language impariment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 384–1397.
Haynes, W., & Hood, S. (1978). Disfluency changes in children as a function of the systematic modification of linguistic complexity. Journal of Communications Disorders, 11, 79–93.
Holmes, V. (1988). Hesitations and sentence planning. Language and Cognitive Process, 3, 323–361.
Kempen, G., & Hoenkamp, E. (1987). An incremental procedural grammar for sentence formulation. Cognitive Science, 11, 201–258.
Leadholm, B., & Miller, J. (1992). Language sample analysis: The Wisconsin guide. Milwaukee: Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Levelt, W. (1989). Speaking. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Loban, W. (1976). The language of elementary school children (NCTE Research Report No 1). Urbana IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
MacWhinney, B. (1995). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
McLaughlin, S., & Cullinan, W. (1989). Disfluencies, utterance length, and linguistic complexity in nonstuttering children. Journal of Fluency Disorder, 14, 17–36.
Rispoli, M. (1998). Patterns of pronoun case error. Journal of Child Language, 25, 533–554.
Rispoli, M. (1999). Case and agreement in English language development. Journal of Child Language, 26, 357–372.
Rispoli, M., & Hadley, P. (2000). An initial exploration into the development of incremental sentence production. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Scarborough, H. (1990). Index of productive syntax. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11, 1–22.
Wijnen, F. (1990). The development of sentence planning. Journal of Child Language, 17, 651–675.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
History
- Received: Nov 20, 2000
- Accepted: May 3, 2001
- Published in issue: Oct 1, 2001
Keywords
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Article Metrics
View all metricsCitations
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu.
Citing Literature
- Georgios P. Georgiou, Constantina Panteli, Elena Theodorou, Speech Rate of Children With Developmental Language Disorder in a Narrative Context, Communication Disorders Quarterly, 10.1177/15257401241271417, (2024).
- Hadar Yaari, Sveta Fichman, Pola Osher, Fedor Dorokhov, Carmit Altman, Disfluencies as a window to macrostructure performance in the narrative of bilingual children, Ampersand, 10.1016/j.amper.2024.100187, 13, (100187), (2024).
- Lourdes Martinez-Nieto, Theresa Moen, Melissa Pierce, Maria Adelaida Restrepo, The use of mazes over time in Spanish heritage speakers in the US, Frontiers in Psychology, 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1125131, 14, (2023).
- Sveta Fichman, Cahtia Adelman, Carmit Altman, Unique Patterns of Bilingual Speech: Factors Affecting Disfluency Rates in Russian–Hebrew Bilingual Children, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 10.1044/2023_JSLHR-23-00048, 66, 12, (4896-4912), (2023).
- Julianne Garbarino, Nan Bernstein Ratner, Stalling for Time: Stall, Revision, and Stuttering-Like Disfluencies Reflect Language Factors in the Speech of Young Children, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00595, 66, 6, (2018-2034), (2023).
- Jiehan Liu, Fan Yu, Chen Feng, Su Li, The Pausing Strategies in Chinese Preschool Children's Narratives, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-21-00542, 66, 2, (431-443), (2023).
- Zoi Gkalitsiou, Danielle Werle, Speech disfluencies in bilingual Greek-English young adults, Journal of Fluency Disorders, 10.1016/j.jfludis.2023.106001, 78, (106001), (2023).
- Henrike Frye, , Child-directed Speech in Qaqet: A Language of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea, 10.22459/CDSQ.2022, (2022).
- Selma Saad Merouwe, Raymond Bertram, Sami Richa, Kurt Eggers, Stuttering Severity Judgments by Speech-Language Pathologists of Bilingual Children Who Do and Do Not Stutter, Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, 10.1159/000528520, 75, 3, (164-176), (2022).
- 4 Speech, Language, and Cognitive Processes, Stuttering and Related Disorders of Fluency, 10.1055/b-0042-189415, (2022).
View Options
Sign In Options
ASHA member? If so, log in with your ASHA website credentials for full access.
Member Login