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Published on: April 19, 2017
Language abilities of 18-month-old Zulu speakers
1Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of the Witwatersrand.
Abstract:
The receptive, expressive and pragmatic language abilities of 18-month-old Zulu speakers were assessed in order to obtain preliminary norms. Twenty-five participants of the Birth to Ten cohort study were investigated using parent reports, mother-child and tester-child interactions. Data was transcribed and analysed using nonparametric statistics. Results demonstrated that receptively subjects understood two-part instructions. Expressively, the mean lexicon was 4.12 words and mean length of utterance 0.65. Pragmatically, subjects were functioning on a nonverbal level and exhibited culture-specific items. The results provided information which could enable speech, language and hearing therapists to engage in primary and secondary prevention. An appropriate test battery for these children is discussed.
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