MLU for languages with complex morphology

Mon May 20 14:49:25 UTC 2013

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!

Peter Gordon

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:28 AM, lofa <lofa4 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>   hi Katie,
> I only know of an article written in 2005 regarding this matter.
> Kind regards,
> Véronique Devianne
> Speech therapist
> Doctorante Sciences du Langage, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3
>
>  *From:* Yonata Levy <msyonata at huji.ac.il>
> *Sent:* Monday, May 20, 2013 3:30 PM
> *To:* CHILDES <info-childes at googlegroups.com>
> *Subject:* Re: MLU for languages with complex morphology
>
>   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.
> Yonata.
>
>
> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 2:47 PM, marilyn vihman <marilyn.vihman at york.ac.uk
> > wrote:
>
>> 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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>
>
>
> --
>  *Prof. Yonata Levy*
> *Psychology Department *
> *and Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical School*
> *Mount Scopus*
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> **
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-- 
Peter Gordon, Associate Professor
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Phone: 212 678-8162
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