Examining the use of standard language production measures in the language samples of African-American toddlers

BE, DO, and Modal Auxiliaries of 3-Year-Old African American English Speakers

“…At least 20 child AAE studies have included auxiliaries within the analyses (Burns, Paulk, Seymour, & Pearson, 2000;Cleveland & Oetting, 2013;Fasold et al, 1987;Green, 2011;Green, Wyatt, & Lopez, 2007;Horton-Ikard, 2002;Horton-Ikard, Ellis Weismer, & Edwards, 2005;Jackson & Roberts, 2001;Oetting & Garrity, 2006;Oetting & McDonald, 2001;Oetting & Pruitt, 2005;Roy, Oetting, & Moland, 2013;Seymour, Bland-Stewart, & Green, 1998;Thompson, Craig, & Washington, 2004;Van Hofwegen & Wolfram, 2010;Washington & Craig, 1994, 2002Washington, Craig, & Kushmaul, 1998). As mentioned earlier, most of these studies have focused on isolated aspects of the AAE grammar, such as those that show differences (or a contrast) between AAE and MAE.…”

Computational Methods for Corpus Annotation and Analysis

“…Passive, any tense, e.g., was played 8 have/had been + verb + ing, e.g., have been playing Modal + have + verb + en, e.g., may have played Modal + be + verb + ing, e.g., could be playing Other auxiliary combinations, e.g., should have been playing a Based on Lee and Canter (1971). to examine the grammatical development of both typically developing children (e.g., Horton-Ikard et al 2005) and children with delayed development (e.g., Thal et al 2004) or language impairment (e.g., Rice et al 2006). Rosenberg and Abbeduto (1987) constructed the original D-Level Scale based on observations of child language acquisition and grammatical generalizations.…”

Index of Productive Syntax for Children Who Speak African American English

“…Since Scarborough’s study, IPSyn has been used to investigate the grammatical development of various groups of children, including typically developing toddlers (Horton-Ikard, Ellis Weismer, & Edwards, 2005; Rispoli & Hadley, 2001); children who are at risk for language delays (Thal, Reilly, Seibert, Jeffries, & Fenson, 2004); children who are late to talk (Rescorla, Dahlsgaard, & Roberts, 2000; Thal et al, 2004); children with hearing impairments (Tomblin, Spencer, Flock, Tyler, & Gantz, 1999); children with specific language impairment (SLI; Hadley, 1998a; Hewitt, Hammer, Yont, & Tomblin, 2004; Rice, Redmond, & Hoffman, 2006); and children who have been diagnosed with other clinical conditions such as autism, Down syndrome, and Fragile X syndrome (Price et al, 2008; Rollins & Snow, 1998; Scarborough, Rescorla, Tager-Flusberg, Fowler, & Sudhalter, 1991; Thordardottir, Chapman, & Wagner, 2002). For example, Hadley (1998a) used IPSyn to track the morpho-syntactic development of 20 mainstream English–speaking children with SLI when they were between the ages of 2 and 3 years.…”

“…Finally, three IPSyn studies have been completed with children who speak nonmainstream dialects of English (Horton-Ikard et al, 2005; Oetting, 2005; Oetting et al, 1999). Oetting et al (1999) and Oetting (2005) calculated children’s IPSyn scores twice, once with utterances containing nonmainstream features included within the language samples and once with these same utterances removed.…”

“…Across both studies, results showed that the children’s IPSyn scores were unaffected by the presence of nonmainstream English features within the samples. In the third study, Horton-Ikard et al (2005) examined children’s IPSyn scores using data from twenty-two 2- and 3-year-olds who were learning a northern variety of AAE. The analyses involved correlations between the children’s IPSyn scores and their AAE use, and AAE use was based on the rates (i.e., densities) at which the children produced nonmainstream English features within their utterances.…”