MLUm & MLUw: summary of responses

[Corinna Butt]

Dear info-childes members,
As requested, here is a summary of the responses to the question I
posted about a week ago: "Is there a difference between MLU in words and
MLU in morphemes?"  Responses included references to both published
studies, as well as  some  anecdotical responses. Thanks to all who
responded!

1.) Studies of non-English speaking children showed high correlations
between MLUw and MLUm.
        Hickey, T. (1991).  Mean length of utterance and the acquisition
of Irish.  Journal of Child Language, 18, 553-569.

        Aguado, G. (1988).  Appraisal of the morpho-syntactic competence
in a 2.5 year old child.  Infancia y Aprendizaje, 43, 75-95.

        Thordardottir, E., & Weismer, S. (1998).  Mean length of
utterance and other language sample measures in early Icelandic.  First
Language, 18 (52 pt. 1), 1-32.

2.) A study in press by M. Malakoff (to appear in Applied Developmental
Psych) found high correlation (.97) between the two measures for 24
month old African American children with low SES.

3.) Responses from researchers who addressed this question either
directly or indirectly in unpublished studies generally reported they
recalled a high correlation between MLUm and MLUw.  The one exception
was a study of Hebrew children, which found a difference between the
scores of the two measures.  Others speculated that the difference in
MLUm and MLUw was greater for langauge impaired childern than for normal
children.

This is all the info I have for now.  If anyone has any more
information, I'd still be interested.
Thanks again! -Corinna Butt