Morphological Errors in Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorders.
Anny Castilla-Earls1, Alejandra Auza2, Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux3
1Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Houston, TX.
Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
|April 8, 2020
Summary
Clitics and verbs are key indicators for identifying developmental language disorders (DLD) in Spanish-speaking children. This study highlights their diagnostic accuracy for DLD in young monolingual Spanish speakers.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Developmental Psychology
- Speech-Language Pathology
Background:
- Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) affect language acquisition in children.
- Accurate identification of DLD in monolingual Spanish-speaking populations is crucial.
- Morphological markers are essential for diagnosing DLD.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine the most accurate morphological markers for identifying DLD in monolingual Spanish-speaking children.
- To evaluate the diagnostic utility of various Spanish morphological structures.
Main Methods:
- Fifty monolingual Spanish-speaking children (25 with DLD, 25 without) participated.
- A specialized elicitation task was used to collect data on morphological structures.
- Morphological structures examined included articles, pronouns, adjectives, plurals, verb conjugations, and subjunctive mood.
Main Results:
- Significant differences between children with and without DLD were observed for most structures, except plurals.
- Logistic regression identified a model including clitics and verbs as the best predictor of DLD.
- This model achieved 96% sensitivity and 80% specificity.
Conclusions:
- Clitics and verb morphology are highly accurate markers for DLD in this population.
- These findings aid in the early and accurate diagnosis of DLD in monolingual Spanish-speaking children.
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