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Syntactic findings in developmental verbal apraxia.
Journal of Communication Disorders
|July 1, 1983
Summary
Children with developmental verbal apraxia often exhibit underlying syntactic deficits alongside speech sound disorder. This study found significant grammatical marker and sentence construction difficulties in these children.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Developmental Psychology
- Speech-Language Pathology
Background:
- Developmental Verbal Apraxia (DVA) is a motor speech disorder.
- Syntactic development is crucial for language acquisition.
- The relationship between DVA and syntactic deficits requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze the syntactic abilities of children with DVA.
- To identify specific grammatical markers and question forms that pose challenges.
- To determine if syntactic deficits co-occur with motor speech impairments in DVA.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of spontaneous language samples from eight children with DVA.
- Evaluation of Mean Length of Utterance (MLU).
- Assessment of Developmental Sentence Scores (DSS), grammatical markers, and question formation.
Main Results:
- Children with DVA showed difficulties with grammatical markers beyond Stage V, and omissions of Stage II markers.
- Developmental Sentence Scores were below age expectations, with pronoun and verb selection issues.
- Errors in yes-no and wh-questions, including auxiliary omissions and non-inversions, were observed.
Conclusions:
- Syntactic disorders appear to co-occur with motor speech and phonologic limitations in some children with DVA.
- Difficulties with grammatical markers and question formation suggest underlying syntactic impairments.
- These findings highlight the need to consider concomitant syntactic deficits in DVA assessment and intervention.