Pavelko, S.L., Owens, R.E., & Hahs-Vaughn, D.L. (2025). Changes in production of complex syntax by elementary-aged school children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 56, 1002-1010. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_LSHSS-24-00141
As language skills develop, a child’s length of spoken utterance increases in length. There is an assumption that as utterance length increases, the sentences spoken also become more complex. Complex sentences include (1) compound (2 simple sentences joined by a conjunction like ‘and’), (2) complex (a sentence and a clause, which is not a full sentence), or (3) compound-complex (2 simple sentences joined with a conjunction and at least 1 clause). It’s reasonable to expect that the proportion of complex sentences spoken would change as children age, but past research has not found such a difference.
The present study examined children’s language samples for how age (5-10 years) predicted (1) the proportion of complex sentences with different types of clauses and (2) the proportion of compound sentences with different types of conjunctions. Findings revealed no age-related differences in the proportion of complex sentences across all clause types. An age-related difference in the proportion of compound sentences was found for the conjunctions but and so, but not and.
The modest age-related differences in complex and compound sentences reported in this study were surprising. The findings provide limited guidance for intervention. Further research is needed examining complex and compound sentence use by children with language difficulties such as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).
No comments:
Post a Comment