DELV diagnostic test

[Tom Roeper]

Dear Childes community,

Since I mentioned the DELV in an earlier note,
I have gotten several inquiries, so I thought a general
note would be useful about the diagnostic test
that has been developed by me, Harry Seymour,
and Jill deVilliers (and many others).
The Psychological Corporation has just released
the Norm-referenced version of the DELV speech-
pathology test, designed to be used for all English-speaking
children.
The test has 14 subparts and tests syntax, phonology,
pragmatics, semantics, inflections, and word-learning. It has
been field tested with 1400 children across the US including
all dialect groups.
The test is called the Diagnostic Evaluation of
Language Variation because it is designed to use
deep, and universal principles of grammar to evaluate
language outside of dialect variation. Dialect variation
often affects inflections (past tense, plural etc) which is
often the focus of speech pathology analysis as well.
Instead it focuses on universal properties of questions,
long-distance rules, quantification, False Belief contexts, novel 
word-learning and
is able to circumvent dialect and reveal a number of new kinds
of more sophisticated language disorders previously ignored,
but involved in school-age language. For instance the three-word
question “who bought what” is particularly revealing.

It is available from the Harcourt subsidiary
The Psychological Corporation (which is one of the world’s
primary testing organizations). The following website
offers more information (or Google DELV):

http://harcourtassessment.com/haiweb/Cultures/en-US/dotCom/DELV/Subnav/DELVInfo.Net+Home.htm

In addition, the Umass research group behind it has
this website:

http://www.umass.edu/aae/

The ASHA journal Seminars in Speech Science has
devoted an entire issue to the new test in 2004.


We hope that the test will enhance research in acquisition generally
and support more research in communication disorders.

Tom Roeper