Changes in the Production of Complex Syntax by Elementary-Aged School Children

Many state standards for elementary students require them to use complex syntax, and research has documented age-related increases in the production of complex utterances in elementary-aged school children. Speech-language pathologists who provide services for these children, however, need detailed information in order to plan curriculum relevant intervention. The purpose of this study is to examine the production of specific subordinate (i.e., nominal, relative, and adverbial) and coordinate clauses obtained from 50-utterance conversational language samples of children between 5 and 10 years of age.

The data sample included 200 children with typical language development, who ranged in age from 5;0 (years;months) to 10;11 (female = 103; male = 97). Fifty utterance conversational language samples were examined for children's use of subordinate clauses (nominal, relative, and adverbial) and coordinate clauses.

Results indicated no statistically significant increases in the use of nominal clauses (p = .937), relative clauses (p = .09), adverbial clauses (p = .727), or the coordinating conjunction "and" (p = .587). The results indicated statistically significant increases in the use of the coordinating conjunctions "but" (p = .009) and "so" (p = .019). For every 1 month increase in age, the use of "but" increased by 0.9% and the use of "so" increased by 1%.

The results of this study indicated that, as children's age increased, they produced more utterances with the coordinating conjunctions "but" and "so." Furthermore, irrespective of children's age, approximately 30% of complex utterances included a nominal and/or adverbial subordinate clause. These results were obtained from 50-utterance language samples and further support the use of language sampling to develop intervention goals and monitor progress in intervention.