<div dir="ltr">It seems to me that one of the points that Roger Brown made about use of morphology and away from telegraphic speech was that this was indicated by a separation of the measures for MLUw and MLUm. In other words, when the morpheme count began to branch away from the word count, then this indicated the incorporation of morphology into the grammar, and a trend away from telegraphic speech. In the Parker & Brorson paper, they show that MLUw and MLUm are almost exactly correlated. The problem is that a correlation does not reveal the shapes of the two curves being correlated -- only whether one goes up when the other goes up. Generally words and morphemes will both increase in utterances over age, but this doesn't mean that the rates are the same. Presumably the morpheme count accelerates at some point that the word count does not, yet the correlation would not be affected by this unless there were a reverse trend, which is unlikely. So, the morpheme count can be more informative than the word count, but perhaps comparing the two is the most informative!<div>
<br></div><div>Peter Gordon</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:28 AM, lofa <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lofa4@hotmail.com" target="_blank">lofa4@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
<div style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Calibri'">
<div>hi Katie,</div>
<div>I only know of an article written in 2005 regarding this matter.</div>
<div>Kind regards,</div>
<div>Véronique Devianne</div>
<div>Speech therapist</div>
<div>Doctorante Sciences du Langage, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3</div>
<div style="font-style:normal;font-size:small;display:inline;text-decoration:none;font-family:'Calibri';font-weight:normal">
<div style="FONT:10pt tahoma">
<div> </div>
<div style="BACKGROUND:#f5f5f5">
<div><b>From:</b> <a title="msyonata@huji.ac.il" href="mailto:msyonata@huji.ac.il" target="_blank">Yonata Levy</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Monday, May 20, 2013 3:30 PM</div>
<div><b>To:</b> <a title="info-childes@googlegroups.com" href="mailto:info-childes@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">CHILDES</a> </div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> Re: MLU for languages with complex
morphology</div></div></div>
<div> </div></div>
<div style="font-style:normal;font-size:small;display:inline;text-decoration:none;font-family:'Calibri';font-weight:normal"><div><div class="h5">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="COLOR:rgb(0,0,153)">
<div class="gmail_default" style="FONT-SIZE:12px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(34,34,34)"><font color="#000099">Since MLU is a heuristic measure, seems to me the solution
to this problem cannot be universal. Rather, it is necessary to establish a
method of counting which will be verified against theoretically-motivated
developmental trajectories to achieve comparative standards. In our studies of
Hebrew speaking children (Hebrew being a root-based, rich morphological
language) we are using a method of counting MLU that takes into consideration
the structure of Hebrew along with the need to guard against an inflated MLU.
Our way of calculating MLU could perhaps inform other root-based languages such
as Arabic but probably not languages with a different typology.</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="FONT-SIZE:12px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(34,34,34)"><font color="#000099">Yonata.</font></div></div></div>
</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 2:47 PM, marilyn vihman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:marilyn.vihman@york.ac.uk" target="_blank">marilyn.vihman@york.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT:1ex;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;BORDER-LEFT:#ccc 1px solid"><div><div class="h5">
<div style="WORD-WRAP:break-word">I think one of the key problems with
calculating MLU in morphemes - although it seems the right way to compare
across languages, in principle - is the productivity problem: How do we know
which morphemes the child really has any kind of mastery over? Is it sensible
or appropriate to count all morphemes as if the child were using them
productively, without any test to see if that is true or not? This may give an
artificially high count to languages with synthetic morphology, lots of
morphemes packed into a single affix...or is a morpheme only counted based on
form? Even then, if the presence or absence of a single consonant means having
one morpheme or two...less of an issue for English, say, than for many other
Indo-European languages...then we probably need much more careful
transcription of the phonetics of the child's speech than is usually thought
necessary in morphosyntactic studies...
<div> </div>
<div>-marilyn</div>
<div>
<div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>On 20 maj <a href="tel:2013" value="+9722013" target="_blank">2013</a>, at
13.40, Isa Barriere wrote:</div><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div><span style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif">I meant to
add:</span></div>
<div><span style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div>
<div><span style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif">In
contrast with a mophologically impoverished/poor language, the number of
morphemes will tend to be positively correlated with the number of words,
which is why it is not as crucial to calculate MLU in morphemes.
</span></div><span style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif">
<div><span style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div>Good
morning,</span>
<div style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif">Isn't there a
negative correlation between morphological complexity of a given language
and the average number of words that an utterance contains in the same
language?</div>
<div style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif"> </div>
<div style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif">If we take the
examples in Inuktitut (given Shanley Allen's book based on her dissertation-
Allen 1989 or 1990, in the appendix), looking at the utterances taking into
account the # of words, many of them would only 1 word. However this
does not capture the complexity of the meaning and the structure- that MLU
does.</div>
<div style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif"> </div>
<div style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif">So for different
stages of devlpt and in the adult language the number of word per utterance
may be limited and pretty stable and the progression is therefore best
assessed taking into account number of morphemes (less stable across ages
and stages). </div>
<div style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif"> </div>
<div style="FONT-SIZE:13px;FONT-FAMILY:arial,sans-serif">Isabelle
Barriere, PhD</div></div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 20, <a href="tel:2013" value="+9722013" target="_blank">2013</a> at 7:37 AM, Isa Barriere <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:barriere.isa@gmail.com" target="_blank">barriere.isa@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT:1ex;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;BORDER-LEFT:#ccc 1px solid">
<div dir="ltr">Good morning,
<div>Isn't there a negative correlation between morphological complexity
of a given language and the average number of words that an utterance
contains in the same language?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>If we take the examples in Inuktitut (given Shanley Allen's book
based on her dissertation- Allen 1989 or 1990, in the appendix), looking
at the utterances taking into account the # of words, many of them would
only 1 word. However this does not capture the complexity of the
meaning and the structure- that MLU does.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>So for different stages of devlpt and in the adult language the
number of word per utterance may be limited and pretty stable and the
progression is therefore best assessed taking into account number of
morphemes (less stable across ages and stages). </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Isabelle Barriere, PhD</div></div></blockquote></div>
<div> </div></div>
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<div><font color="#000099"><strong><em>Psychology Department
</em></strong></font></div>
<div><font color="#000099"><strong><em>and Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical
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