Measuring productive syntactic abilities in Mandarin-speaking children in Taiwan

This study aimed to develop a fine-grained measure for evaluating syntactic abilities in Mandarin-speaking children for educational and clinical purposes as a supplement to MLU.

In total, 99 typically developing children, aged 2;0 to 5;11, living in Taipei, Taiwan, participated in this study. Spontaneous language samples were elicited in free-play situations. The first 100 intelligible utterances were coded with a newly developed scheme: the Mandarin Assessment of Productive Syntax-Revised (MAPS-R). For the examination of concurrent validity, MLU was also computed.

Significant age-related differences were observed in both MLU and MAPS-R scores. Strong correlations were found between MLU and MAPS-R scores, confirming the validity of MAPS-R as a measure of syntactic development. MAPS-R further revealed that Mandarin-speaking children expanded noun phrases with the general classifier 'GE' very early on, followed by a locative expression. Verb expansions began with resultative complements and aspect markers. Sentences with complex predication structures, such as serial verbs/pivotal sentences, were still not widely used when the MLU value is below 4.5.

The study showed that MAPS-R is a reliable and valid measure that can provide a rich profile of the syntactic development of Mandarin-speaking children. It can be a useful reference for speech therapists to set a baseline for developing language intervention plans and to monitor their outcome.