Abstract
PurposeThis review article summarizes programmatic research on sentence diversity in toddlers developing language typically and explores developmental patterns of sentence diversity in toddlers at risk for specific language impairment.MethodThe first half of this review article presents a sentence-focused approach to language assessment and intervention and reviews findings from empirical studies of sentence diversity. In the second half, subject and verb diversity in three simple sentence types are explored in an archival database of toddlers with varying levels of grammatical outcomes at 36 months of age: low average, mild/moderate delay, and severe delay.ResultsDescriptive findings from the archival database replicated previous developmental patterns. All toddlers with low-average language abilities produced diverse simple sentences by 30 months of age and exhibited greater sentence diversity with first-person I-subjects before third-person subjects. Third-person subject diversity emerged in a developmental sequence, increasing in one-argument copula contexts and one-argument subject–verb sentences before two-argument subject–verb–object sentences. This developmental pattern held across all three outcome groups. Third-person subjects were least diverse for children with severe grammatical delays and were absent in all sentence contexts for two children with severe delays at 36 months.ConclusionsSentence diversity increases gradually and expands in predictable patterns. Understanding these developmental patterns may help identify and treat children who display unexpected difficulty combining different subjects and verbs in flexible ways.Supplemental Material and Presentation Video https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12915320
Highlights
This review article summarizes programmatic research on sentence diversity in toddlers developing language typically and explores developmental patterns of sentence diversity in toddlers at risk for specific language impairment
A hallmark characteristic of preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) is difficulty with the acquisition of grammar, even when compared to younger typically developing children matched for mean length of utterance
All children in the low average group produced I-subjects with two or more different verbs by 30 months, all children in the mild/moderate delay group met this criterion by 33 months, and all children in the severe delay group met this criterion by 36 months
Summary
This review article summarizes programmatic research on sentence diversity in toddlers developing language typically and explores developmental patterns of sentence diversity in toddlers at risk for specific language impairment. This finding indicates that children’s knowledge of clause structure, as indexed by a measure of sentence diversity with third-person subjects, contributes to developmental changes in the marking of tense and agreement. McKenna and Hadley (2014) conducted a retrospective analysis of sentence diversity at 30 months for two English-speaking children identified as at risk for SLI based on below-average criterion scores on the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment at 36 months (Rice & Wexler, 2001).
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