Nippold Marilyn A, Mansfield Tracy C, Billow Jesse L, Tomblin J Bruce
Communication Disorders and Sciences, College of Education, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA.
Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2008 Nov;17(4):356-66. doi: 10.1044/1058-0360(2008/07-0049). Epub 2008 Oct 7.
This study examined syntactic development in a large cohort of adolescents. At kindergarten, each participant had been identified as having specific language impairment (SLI), nonspecific language impairment (NLI), or typical language development (TLD).
The participants (n = 444) had a mean age of 13;11 (years;months; range = 12;10-15;5). Language samples were elicited in 2 genres, conversational and expository, and analyzed for mean length of T-unit and subordinate clause production.
Mean length of T-unit and the use of nominal, relative, and adverbial clauses were greater during the expository task than the conversational task for all groups. Thus, even the SLI and NLI groups produced longer sentences containing greater amounts of subordination when speaking in the expository genre than in the conversational genre. No group differences were revealed by the conversational task. However, on the expository task, the TLD group outperformed both the SLI and NLI groups on mean length of T-unit, and the TLD group outperformed the NLI group on relative clause use.
Speech-language pathologists may wish to employ expository discourse tasks rather than conversational tasks to examine syntactic development in adolescents.
本研究调查了一大群青少年的句法发展情况。在幼儿园时，每位参与者已被确定为患有特定语言障碍（SLI）、非特定语言障碍（NLI）或典型语言发展（TLD）。
参与者（n = 444）的平均年龄为13岁11个月（岁；月；范围 = 12岁10个月 - 15岁5个月）。通过对话和说明文两种体裁收集语言样本，并分析T单位的平均长度和从句生成情况。
在所有组中，说明文任务中的T单位平均长度以及名词性、关系性和状语从句的使用均高于对话任务。因此，即使是SLI组和NLI组，在使用说明文体裁讲话时，也会比使用对话体裁时生成更长且包含更多从属成分的句子。对话任务未显示出组间差异。然而，在说明文任务中，TLD组在T单位平均长度方面优于SLI组和NLI组，且在关系从句使用方面优于NLI组。
言语语言病理学家可能希望采用说明文语篇任务而非对话任务来检查青少年的句法发展情况。
