Linguistic Analysis of Children’s Speech: A Comparison of Four Procedures

Abstract

The use of four current linguistic procedures for assessing the development of children’s language was investigated. Clinicians need an accurate, reliable, and easily applied procedure to assess language performance that will enable them to prescribe treatment. Two subjects, one advanced and one delayed in language development, were chosen on the basis of their chronological age, mental age, and oral language skills. An examiner collected language samples from the two children and scored them according to instructions for the four procedures. The four procedures were then represented in similar tabular form to facilitate comparison. Each procedure was analyzed for its ease of application, interscorer reliability, ability to discriminate language differences between the two subjects, and ability to describe specifically the differences between the subjects. The procedures using a slot-filler (tagmemic) analysis appeared to handle the language samples most adequately. The authors believe that a renewed interest in basic structural linguistic concepts should prove valuable to the assessment of language development.