MLU for languages with complex morphology

[marilyn vihman]

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...

-marilyn


On 20 maj 2013, at 13.40, Isa Barriere wrote:

> I meant to add:
> 
> 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. 
> 
> Good morning,
> 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?
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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). 
> 
> Isabelle Barriere, PhD
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 7:37 AM, Isa Barriere <barriere.isa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Good morning,
> 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?
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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). 
> 
> Isabelle Barriere, PhD
> 
> 
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