Mean length of utterance and other language sample measures in early Icelandic

Abstract

Adaptations of the widely used MLU measure have been developed in several languages. Such adaptations require numerous modifications, especially in languages that are highly inflected. This study involved the development of a systematic procedure for coding language samples from Icelandic toddlers. Results are reported in terms of mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU), total vocabulary, total number of different words and type-token ratio (TTR). These measures are analogous to their English counterparts, though not directly comparable. The Icelandic MLU measure was found to be developmentally sensitive in the age range of the study, which included a cross- sectional sample of 36 children aged 15 to 36 months. MLU correlated more strongly with sentence complexity than did age. Consistent with studies in Dutch and Irish, MLU in morphemes was very highly correlated with MLU in words in normally developing children. This relationship remains to be tested in children with language impairments. A secondary goal of this study was to provide descriptive data on the early acquisition of inflectional morphology in Icelandic, derived from language sample analysis.