Pemerolehan klausa relatif dalam kalangan kanak-kanak Melayu: satu kajian awal

Kajian awal ini mengkaji perkembangan pemerolehan struktur sintaksis iaitu struktur klausa relatif dalam kalangan kanak-kanak Melayu di Lembah Klang. Objektif kajian adalah untuk menentukan kebolehan penggunaan struktur klausa relatif dalam kalangan kanak-kanak Melayu merentasi dua kelompok umur yang berbeza. Objektif kedua, adalah untuk menentukan sama ada pemerolehan struktur klausa relatif bersifat developmental/ perkembangan berdasarkan peningkatan umur. Di samping itu, kajian ini juga akan menganalisis kesalahan yang dihasilkan oleh kanak-kanak tersebut berdasarkan kategori tertentu untuk menunjukkan aspek perkembangan dalam pemerolehan struktur klausa relatif. Enam kanak-kanak dipilih sebagai subjek kajian dan dibahagikan kepada dua kumpulan: kumpulan tadika dan kumpulan sekolah rendah tahap satu. Data dikutip melalui dua cara utama – (i) aktiviti padanan ayat-gambar untuk menguji kebolehan pemahaman struktur klausa relatif (ii) aktiviti Pilihan Gambar dan Huraian Gambar untuk menguji kebolehan penghasilan klausa relatif. Kedua-dua jenis ujian ini merangkumi dua struktur klausa relatif iaitu struktur klausa relatif subjek (KRS) dan klausa relatif objek (KRO). Dapatan kajian memperlihatkan tidak terdapat perbezaan yang signifikan antara kumpulan subjek tadika dan kumpulan subjek sekolah rendah bagi kebolehan kefahaman klausa relatif tetapi wujud perbezaan yang signifikan antara kumpulan bagi kebolehan penghasilan klausa relatif. Kebolehan kumpulan subjek tadika dalam menghasilkan struktur KRO adalah agak terhad. Sementelah, struktur KRO juga belum sepenuhnya dikuasai oleh kumpulan subjek sekolah rendah. Ini bermaksud bahawa struktur KRO didapati agak lewat diperoleh dan perkembangannya masih berterusan sehingga kanak-kanak berusia melampaui umur 9 tahun. Walau bagaimanapun, skor min subjek didapati meningkat sejajar dengan peningkatan umur. Dapatan analisis kualititatif menunjukkan subjek menggunakan strategi pemudahan ayat dan strategi penggantian. Didapati kumpulan subjek menggunakan dua variasi bahasa Melayu: subjek tadika cenderung menggunakan variasi bahasa Melayu kolokial berbanding kumpulan subjek sekolah rendah yang cenderung menggunakan variasi bahasa Melayu standard dan dikotomi ini dengan ketara mempengaruhi prestasi mereka di dalam aktiviti yang dijalankan

A report of assessment tools for individuals with dysarthria

Introduction: The development of assessment tools for individuals with dysarthria has been reported in many clinical and empirical studies. Methodology: A literature review was based on online resources including Google Scholar, EBSCO, Medline, PubMed, and BIOMED Central articles and journals. Results and Conclusion: In this paper, we summarized the commonly used formal and informal assessment tools and explained the assessment procedure when managing clients with dysarthria. We aimed to share the current practice of speech-language pathologists together with the allied health service providers in the management of patients with dysarthri

Targeting complex orthography in the treatment of a bilingual aphasia with acquired dysgraphia: The case of a Malay/English speaker with conduction aphasia

Background: Disruption of spoken language in people with aphasia tends to interfere with the ability to write, which is referred to as dysgraphia. This study examined the effectiveness of the anagram and copy treatment (ACT), administered in English on a bilingual Malay/English patient with conduction aphasia (GM). ACT is the arrangement of component letters presented in scrambled order (i.e., an anagram) so that the patient could use the letters to form target words, followed by repeated copying of the word. Methods: A single-subject multiple-baseline design was used with sets of English words (both nouns and verbs) sequentially targeted for treatment. Prior to the treatment, a series of single word writing and reading baselines were conducted in two languages: English and Malay. The ACT treatment was done in English, the language reported as more dominant for reading by the patient. Probes assessing generalizations to untrained pictures were presented at 8th, 13th, and 18th sessions. Results: GM showed steady and incremental improvement in the writing of trained nouns and verbs, with generalizations to untrained English nouns and verbs. Conclusions: Single word writing treatment in a non-transparent language may improve dysgraphia among adults with bilingual aphasia through the administration of a structured and systematic treatment

Oral Language Skills and Literacy Skills of Malay Children with Dyslexia

Dyslexia can involve among others, difficulties in spoken language. However, there is limited local data on oral language (narrative skills) and literacy skills in children with dyslexia. The relationship between language and literacy is well documented although they involve complicated and non-straightforward processes. There is also evidence suggesting a link between language difficulties with subsequent literacy difficulties. Thus, this study aims to identify and describe the language and literacy skills of Malay children with dyslexia, and to discuss the possible relationships between them. Subjects were six children with dyslexia in the Klang Valley, Malaysia aged 8:0 to 9:11 (mean age, 8:10) who were compared to an age-matched control group (n = 10). The battery of tests administrated was phonological awareness test, language task, narrative, and literacy tasks. Our findings showed that children with dyslexia had generally weaker language and literacy skills than the control group. There were significant differences (p < .05) in grammar understanding, sentence repetition, and reading and spelling at both word and paragraph levels. Pearson correlation between language and literacy was shown to be positive and strong, r = .887, p < .05. The qualitative discussion of the data is presented. Findings from this study would provide useful information to teachers and speech-language therapists in their teaching or planning of appropriate clinical evaluation and management of children with dyslexia

The comprehension and production of Wh- questions among Malay children with developmental language disorders: Climbing the syntactic tree

This study is an investigation of both comprehension and production of Wh- questions in Malay-speaking children with a developmental language disorder (DLD). A total of 15 Malay children with DLD (ages 7;0–9;11 years) were tested on a set of Wh- questions (who subject and object, which subject and object), comparing their performance with two control groups [15 age-matched typically developing (TD) children and 15 younger TD language-matched children]. Malay children with DLD showed a clear asymmetry in comprehension of Wh- questions, with a selective impairment for which NP questions compared with who questions. Age-matched controls performed at ceiling in all Wh- questions, while the language-matched group reported a subject/object asymmetry selective for the which NP, as reported in other languages. In production, both children with DLD and younger children showed a preference for questions with in situ Wh- elements, a structure that is allowed in colloquial Malay, but which is not produced by the age-matched TD group. Several non-adult-like strategies were adopted particularly by the children with DLD to avoid complex sentences, including substitution with yes/no echo questions, production of the wrong Wh- question, and use of a generic Wh- element. The study provides an insight on the mastery of Wh- questions in both typical Malay children and children with DLD. Implications for the definition of a clinical marker for DLD in a free word order language with Wh- in situ option will be discussed

Using mannose as a positive selection of transformed Carica papaya l. var ‘Eksotika’

The main objective of this study is to develop marker-free transgenic papaya plants via positive selection using phosphomannose isomerase (pmi) gene. Phosphomannose isomerase (PMI) is an enzyme that converts mannose-6-phosphateto fructose-6-phosphate, a glycolysis intermediate that supports the growth of plant cells. To establish a marker-free positive selection system using this PMI, the effect of mannose on the growth and development of embryogenic ‘Eksotika’ papaya callus was evaluated. One-month old embryogenic calli were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium in which 60 g/L sucrose in the original recipe was replaced with different concentrations of mannose and sucrose. Mannose was supplied as the sole carbon source or in combination with sucrose at 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 g/L. Embryogenic calli cultured on medium supplemented with a ratio of 0:60 g/L mannose: sucrose was used as a control. The results after six sub-cultures showed that most of the embryogenic calli transferred on media containing only mannose turned brown. Higher concentrations of mannose resulted in higher percentage of brown calli (dead). Mannose at 30 g/L mannose was found to be effective for screening transformed embryogenic calli. Evaluation of papaya transformation Efficiency using this positive selection system was pursued using 650 one-month-old embryogenic calli Agrobacterium-transformed with pNOV2819 harboring the pmigene. Only transformed cells are capable of utilizing mannose as a carbon source to grow. After five months on mannose selection, all 67 putative transformants obtained were PCR-positives for the pmi gene

Construction of the Malay cross-linguistic lexical task: a preliminary report

This paper reports on the development of the Malay Crosslinguistic Lexical Task (LITMUS-CLT) following the initiative of the COST Action IS0804 to create parallel tasks assessing various aspects of language development in bilingual and multilingual children (Armon-Lotem, de Jong, & Meir, 2015). LITMUS-CLTs are picture naming and picture choice tasks assessing receptive and expressive knowledge of single nouns and verbs. CLTs are created according to the same criteria in each language individually with the use of a common picture database. The development of the Malay CLT follows the procedure designed within the COST Action IS0804 with the modifications required for a new language in the sample of CLT languages. To that end, two preparatory studies with adult native speakers of Malay were conducted: a picture naming study using CLT picture base and a subjective age of acquisition (AoA) survey for words obtained in the picture naming study. The results of the two studies show that although Malay is typologically distant from languages included so far in the CLT sample, patterns similar to previous studies were obtained: nouns had higher naming agreement than verbs and AoA for all words was within the range of three to nine years (Łuniewska, et al., 2016)

Age of acquisition of 299 words in seven languages: American English, Czech, Gaelic, Lebanese Arabic, Malay, Persian and Western Armenian

We present a new set of subjective Age of Acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in seven languages from various language families and cultural settings: American English, Czech, Scottish Gaelic, Lebanese Arabic, Malaysian Malay, Persian, and Western Armenian. The ratings were collected from a total of 173 participants and were highly reliable in each language. We applied the same method of data collection as used in a previous study on 25 languages which allowed us to create a database of fully comparable AoA ratings of 299 words in 32 languages. We found that in the seven languages not included in the previous study, the words are estimated to be acquired at roughly the same age as in the previously reported languages, i.e. mostly between the ages of 1 and 7 years. We also found that the order of word acquisition is moderately to highly correlated across all 32 languages, which extends our previous conclusion that early words are acquired in similar order across a wide range of languages and cultures

Differential coding of perception in the world’s languages

Is there a universal hierarchy of the senses, such that some senses (e.g., vision) are more accessible to consciousness and linguistic description than others (e.g., smell)? The long-standing presumption in Western thought has been that vision and audition are more objective than the other senses, serving as the basis of knowledge and understanding, whereas touch, taste, and smell are crude and of little value. This predicts that humans ought to be better at communicating about sight and hearing than the other senses, and decades of work based on English and related languages certainly suggests this is true. However, how well does this reflect the diversity of languages and communities worldwide? To test whether there is a universal hierarchy of the senses, stimuli from the five basic senses were used to elicit descriptions in 20 diverse languages, including 3 unrelated sign languages. We found that languages differ fundamentally in which sensory domains they linguistically code systematically, and how they do so. The tendency for better coding in some domains can be explained in part by cultural preoccupations. Although languages seem free to elaborate specific sensory domains, some general tendencies emerge: for example, with some exceptions, smell is poorly coded. The surprise is that, despite the gradual phylogenetic accumulation of the senses, and the imbalances in the neural tissue dedicated to them, no single hierarchy of the senses imposes itself upon language

Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) in the Treatment of Naming Deficits: Evidence from a Malay Speaker with Non-Fluent Aphasia

Introduction Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) is a treatment for lexical retrieval impairment in which participants are cued by providing semantic information regarding concepts they have difficulty with in naming tasks in an effort to facilitate accurate lexical retrieval (Boyle & Coelho, 1995). People with aphasia are commonly found to have naming deficits and speech-language therapists (SLTs) face difficulties in providing an effective treatment method to treat this deficit. This study aims to examine the use of SFA to address naming deficits for nouns and verbs in a Malay patient (KM) with non-fluent aphasia. Methods The following tests were administered to the subject pre- and post- treatment: 1) Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE); 2) Malay Object and Action Test (MOAT); and 3) A series of comprehension and production assessments in Malay. Subject was asked to name 101 and 50 pictures from MOAT. The stimuli were coloured photograph pictures. Treatment and probe (untrained) stimuli were selected from pictures that a subject could not name, yielding 40 nouns and 30 verbs. From these, 20 stimuli were randomly chosen as probe items and 20 as treatment stimuli (nouns), 15 treatment and 15 probes (verbs). For the treatment study, single subject A-B-A design was implemented. Three baseline sessions were completed prior to treatment initiation naming for both probe and treatment pictures. Subject attended once-weekly therapy sessions over 8 months. Probes assessing generalizations to untrained pictures were presented at 4th, 8th, and 12th and so on until the end of the programme. Results Results showed that KM’s ability to name trained and untrained picture stimuli improved for both nouns and verbs. KM demonstrated steady improvement in the SFA treatment of trained nouns and verbs: from 5% baseline accuracy to over 90% accuracy at treatment end for nouns and from 0% baseline accuracy to 90% accuracy at treatment end for verbs. Generalizations to untrained nouns and verbs also showed similar results. KM exhibited marked progress - from naming four nouns (20%) and two verbs (13%) in first probe to 17 nouns (85%) and 13 verbs (87%) in final probe. Pre- and post-assessments results revealed that KM performed better in most of the tasks measured. Conclusion Findings from this study replicate outcomes of previous studies using SFA with people with aphasia. SFA is proven to have helped individuals with naming deficits in accessing semantic features of a target word in a structured and systematic way. Training using the same set/number of pictures in the treatment helps a patient’s ability to retrieve untrained words. This procedure could assist practicing SLTs in Malaysia in treating naming deficits among Malay speakers with aphasia, hence increasing their verbal communication