Presentation at the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association (ASHA) 2018, Boston MA.</p

Jackson, Janice E

Pearson, Barbara Zurer

English

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

Morphosyntactic markers and abstract linguistic structure in language evaluation

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Publication of the DELV tests and beyond NIH Working Groups on African American English (AAE) 2018 Morphosyntactic markers and abstract linguistic structure in language evaluation Barbara Zurer Pearson Janice E. Jackson Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/aae_delv  Part of the Language Description and Documentation Commons The Relationship betweenMorphosyntactic Markers and Abstract Linguistic Structure in Language EvaluationBarbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D  zpearson@umass.eduJanice E. Jackson, Ph.D.professorjackson@Hotmail.comNov. 16, 2018, ASHA Annual Meeting, Boston MABarbara Zurer PearsonUniversity of Massachusetts AmherstLanguage Acquisition Research CenterJanice E. Jackson, CCC-SLPDeKalb County School District, GeorgiaSpeaking Strategies, Inc.Potential Conflict of InterestThe data and examples for this talk come from the DELV-ST and DELV-NR (Seymour, Roeper, & de Villiers, 2003, 2005 & 2018)Non-financial: We were both members of the UMass NIH Working Groups on AAE (which was active from 1993 to 2005) that produced the DELV tests.  Janice’s doctoral research contributed to the conceptual framework of the project, and Barbara was the Project Manager, and now a co-author.  Financial: Janice has no financial conflict of interest.  Barbara could receive a royalty from sales of the DELV.Plan of the session• Overview (and Terms)• Introduction of the issue we want to raise• Brainstorming—How to proceed?!• Presentation of one strategy and findings• Implications for practice• Responsibility of participants—PARTICIPATE actively– 5 minutes Introduction and overview– 15 minutes Presentation of the problem to be addressed, and sources of data to address it– 10 minutes Small breakout group discussion of alternative research designs and considerations – 5 minutes Present proposals from the break-out groups– 10 minutes Presentation of the authors’ design and results– 10 minutes Discussion of implications for practice– 5 minutes Conclusions and wrap upOverview  and termsIn this talk, we (and we hope you as participants) will investigate the ability of children speaking different varieties of English with different levels and means of morphosyntactic marking, to demonstrate understanding of more implicit (abstract) relationships within sentences, discourse, and in communicative situations.IMPLICIT Linguistic Relationships• Are essential to language competence• But, often times overlooked (clinical practices)We will discuss what we mean by implicit linguistic relationships between words and sentence parts, and how they contribute to utterance meaning. We will explore if there is a relationship between speakers with different types of morphosyntactic expressions and competence with some specifically examined implicit linguistic relationship forms. LANGUAGE : TYPICAL & IMPAIREDLanguage Impaired- Morphosyntax-ed ? -s ?’s ?Typical Language MorphosyntaxExpressions Across English VarietiesAAE• Yesterday my mom bake cookies• We need two more book• We go to my auntie houseMAE• Yesterday my mom bakedcookies• We need two more books• We go to my auntie’s houseExplicitness in Morphosyntactic MarkingExplicit Morphosyntactic Marking Amigo• o = Morpheme Marks MasculineAmiga• a = Morpheme Marks Feminine Professor• El Professor Ø• Triggers a masculine articlePhonologically Unexpressed Morphemes (PUE)PUE • Yesterday my mom bake a cakeØ• We need two more bookØ• We go to my auntieØ housePhonologically Unexpressed/Expressed MorphemesPUE • Yesterday my mom bakeØ a cake• We need two more book Ø• We go to my auntieØ housePE• Yesterday my mom baked a cake• We need two more books• We go to my auntie’s houseMeaning Does Not Require Explicitness• Yesterday my mom bake cookies   Yesterday=past tense• We need two more book                 Two = plurality (more than one) • We go to my auntie house               My = possession3/17/2019-ed ? -s ?’s ?+ed + -s+’s+/Ø ed +/Ø -s  +/Ø ’sLanguage Impaired MSMS Typical LanguageExplicit PE Expression MS Typical Language PUE ExpressionImplicit Linguistic Relationship CompetenceImplicit Structural (Linguistic) Relationships• Higher-order (a level within a level)– Where do you sit?, Who bought that? – Who sits where?• Meaning is not on the surface/obvious in (Implicit) grammatical relationships• What did he eat?  vs. Who ate what? Implicit Structural (Linguistic) Relationships• There are a variety of these types of structural relationships that are needed to have language competence.  • Not Traditionally Focused Upon • Include: – Article/determiners• requires subtle interpretation of knowledge about the specificity or general nature of something ‘a apple’ vs. ‘the apple’– Higher-order wh-questions• require interpretation of deep structure traces not found in surface structure– Passive structures  • require that you can not rely on word order to determine meaning. – Quantification –• Is every dog eating a bone 3/17/2019Implicit –inferred or understood w/o being overtly statedSometimes Ambiguous:The boy touched the monkey with a banana.(Who has the banana?)How can you tell?  Complex (non ambig) Example• This mother went out one night to buy a surprise birthday cake.  The next day, the little girl saw the bag and asked:  “what did you buy?”  Mom said, “just some paper towels.”– What did she say she bought?  – Is it asking “what did she buy?”  or what did she say? Examples are from the DELV-NR.  We have a window into how children understand “implicit” “underlying” “deep” structural relationships in the sentences they hear (and produce)<How many are familiar with the DELV-NR?> Its particular focus is subtle relationships that are not obvious—but we learn them anyway.  And so do children.DELV-Norm Referenced and Implicit KnowledgeMore on Implicit Relationships• Subtle relationships between elements across sentences “THE”• Articles:  well-known rule from stories-- 1st mention versus 2ndmention.  Awkward to use “the” for first mention.– I saw the boy??!  (what boy??)– Vs. I saw a boy.  The boy stood on his head.  • EXCEPT what about:– My car stalled on the highway today.  The radiator ran dry.  What radiator?  Did anyone mention a radiator?  Could I say “a radiator”?  (Only if your car has more than one of them.)  How does the child know?!-ed ? -s ?’s ?+ed + -s+’s+/Ø ed +/Ø -s  +/Ø ’sLanguage Impaired MSMS Typical LanguageExplicit PE Expression MS Typical Language PUE ExpressionImplicit Linguistic Relationship CompetenceImplicit Linguistic Relationship Competence“When do you use a flashlight?" "To see it’s dark.”"Where do you go to learn?""At the morning.”What do you use to tell time?""To tell the time is."  "To know what is the time is."Morphosyntax Expression TypeIntroduction of IssuesAll varieties have implicit relationships.  We are recovering them all the time!• All languages have both explicit and implicit in different proportions. High-explicit will have lots of case marking; I think Icelandic is the language with the most, but I learned about cases and declensions (lots of explicit markers!) when I studied Latin.   English as you know has relatively few explicit MS bound morphemes;  AAE even fewer. Thus more relationships have to be inferred (implicitly). We ask, If a language has both Explicit and Implicit relationships grammaticized (and they all do), how do they relate to each other from the point of view of the learner?Mainstream American English High Explicit Marking (HEM)v.Different from Mainstream Low Explicit Marking (LEM)• Nothing? All the same?• Or if one is bad at HEM, also bad at implicit abstract relationships, too?Could HEM be a disadvantage for learners of the language?Could LEM be an advantage for learners looking for implicit relationships?Does one have any effect on the other?Yes?No?Maybe?Both yes and no?What does HEM or LEM mean for the learner?Possible Hypotheses• Hypothesis 1: It is easier for children who are used to LEM in morphosyntax in their everyday, very common expressions to handle more complex LEM?• Hypothesis 2:  It is harder for children who are used to LEM in their everyday, very common expressions to handle more complex LEM? OR(alternately, H1a: It is harder for children who are used to HEM in their everyday, very common expressions to handle complex LEMH2a: It is harder for children who are used to HEM in their everyday, very common expressions to handle complex LEM?How will we test them??BrainstormingHow can we decide which is right?What data do we need?What do we need to look for?10 minutes in small groups:  5 minutes reporting out.Start by addressing the learning objectives:Learning goals are for participants to demonstrate that they can—1. Define what is meant by "explicitly marked" and "implicit" when applied to grammatical structures and be able to give an example of each type2. Discuss at least 3 possibilities for how explicit marking and implicit grammatical relationships can be tested3. Explain how knowledge of explicit marking and implicit grammatical relationships can be relatedShare with each other/ trade examples and suggestions:What are they? (structures with explicit and implicit relationships)How can you know what a kid does when she meets one?How can we know if they’re related? Who thinks they are related?  Who thinks they’re not related?One strategy--What we didTo test the relationship between any two measures, can use….1. Correlation2. Two by two (cross) tables3. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA—to confirm whether any differences observed are significant (or not)Need two measures (at least)– Measure of Explicit Marking– Measure of Implicit Markinglanguage measure that depends on abilities with unstated relationships (underlying sentence structures)More on measures….Need two types of measures– Continuous measures (for correlation, for dependent variable in Anova)• e.g., lots of values, as in all the possible values between 0 and 1.– Categorical measure (for cross-tables and independent variables in Anova.)• e.g.  labels, such as “Hi” versus “Lo”; “green” versus “blue”; male v. femaleMeasures available• Have DELV Scores (from standardization samples)• For Explicit marking:  – DELV-Screening Test Part 1 Language Variation Status (LVS)—shows us tendency of Explicit Marking (EM), regardless of ethnicityCan be:– Categorical-- (“no difference from MAE”/ “some or strong difference from MAE”)– Continuous-- DELV dialect density ratio derived from answers to the 15 items on Part 1 (AAE responses/ (AAE+MAE))You might ask:  How did we derive “MAE” versus “Some or strong difference from MAE”?  --Empirically. (See next slides.)Determining LEM or HEM• Start with 89 items (from the literature—as in list on left)• DELV pilot version (DSLT) included 89 MS and Phonological items, tested with 1500 children in a nationwide sample (including 2/3 AA children and 1/3 EurA children).  • Note that the DELV “Language Variation Status” Screening test part 1, ended up with the 15 most persistent AAE items, but the basis for the LVS labels was from the 89 items.  LVS (from 15 items) was confirmed to be equivalent to scores on 89 items (see next slide) .Table and figure from Jackson & Pearson (submitted) Empirically derived level for “no difference” and “strong difference” from MAEShows mean levels for EurA TD (gray bars)Age 4 -- 10% contrastive itemsAge 7-8 yrs -- 3% for EurA-TDAges 11-12yrs -- <1% for EurA-TDAAE, MAE-2nd dialect speakers(black bars)All Ages -- 10% or more Small number of “no diff from MAE”Both decline over time, but AAE (average) levels were never lower than EurA levels at age 4Established with reference to 500 MAE children from 4 to 12 yrsIn national representative sampleMeasures available -2• Have DELV Scores • For Implicit Marking:  DELV-Norm Referenced items – show ability with implicit relationships (like double-wh, long-distance movement with wh, article scenarios)– Total standard score– Also subscores:  examples; double-wh (paired exhaustive answers)Participants and variablesData from the DELV pilots:  Here--• 1000 children---70% AA, 30% EurA• (AA--AAE speakers mostly, but not all, LEM• EurA--MAE speakers mostly, but not all, HEM• Independent variables:  Each child coded and groups matched on age, ethnicity, gender, region, parent-education level• DELV-ST LVS—no difference or some-strong difference from MAEalso density ratio of DELV ST responses• DELV-NR items – shows ability with implicit relationships– Standard score     Double-whResults• Analyzed whole group first.  Then re-do split by AA and EurA• Also split by TD and LI---why?!• 1.  Correlations – dialect density ratio (higher = more AAE-like)  – w/ Delv composite score – (Among LI only, less variability: AA-LI r = 0.05 n.s; EurA-LI  r = .15 n.s.)• Take home:  negative correlation: the higher the EM, the lower the DELV composite and vice versa.  (They’re related!  But wait, they’re also not related, or weakly related….)• Why might it be different for EurA and AA? Whole group N=1000r = -0.4* p < .05AA only, N = 720 r = - 0.36*EurA only N= 280 r = - 0.44*2. Cross-tables• If you’re HEM, chances are 97% that you’re TD )  342/354.• If you’re LEM, chances are 91% that you’re TD     586/646 N=1000 Explicit marking levelClinical statusHEMN=354 LEMN=646TD  n=928 HEM-TD342LEM-TD    586LI  n=72 HEM-LI12LEM-LI60Does it work the same way for AA and EurA children?• Redone for AA and EurAEurA N = 280 HEM LEMTD  n= 260 HEM-TD216LEM-TD44    LI  n= 20 HEM-LI8LEM-LI12AA  N = 720 HEM LEMTD  n= 668 HEM-TD126LEM-TD    542LI  n= 52 HEM-LI4LEM-LI48Both ethnicities, if you’re HEM, 96 or 97% of the time you were TDIf you’re LEM and AA, there was a 92% chance, you were TDIf you’re LEM and EurA, only 79% chance that you were TD.LEM prediction21% LI (EurA) vs 8% LI (AA)80% of EurA were HEM/   only 18% of AA were HEM3. ANOVAThese next three show results of analysis of variance showing the figures of the means to be compared.  • Analysis shows that (for total standardized score) : • HEM is significantly higher than LEM (very small effect size)– (F (1,992) = 8.5, p=.004, ƞ2 = .006)• TD and LI are significantly different from each other (large effect size) (F (1,992) = 173, p < .0001, ƞ2 = .20)• AA and EurA don’t see any significant differences, except perhaps a little in the group with LI. – (F (1,992) = .031, p = .859, ƞ2 < .0001)• The message is the same as from the cross tables:  HEM is a slight advantage for all children.  (Those with HEM, get higher DELV-NR scores.)  LEM not a disadvantage for AA, (observed number of LI the same as predicted number) but is for EurA-LEM, % of LI is higher than AA-LEM and higher than would be predicted (based on empirically derived levels of occurrence of SLI in general population. Comparison of Implicit Relationship Scores by Explicit Marking Status (also by Ethnicity, and Clinical Status)Take home:  HEM average a little higher than LEM; (a little above the average (107), versus a little below the average (97);  AA and EurA similar, at both TD and LI levels; TD = “average”; LI > 1.5 SD below meanComparison of Implicit Relationship Scores by Explicit Marking Status, Ethnicity, and Clinical StatusThe missing column is “zero right on average; very few HEM AA-LI children;  These are not standardized scores, but same lessons, AA and EurA about the same story;  HEM higher than LEM  “statistically, but not substantively important differences (EurA-LI Lo-EM slightly lower than AA-LI-Lo-EM). TD and LI are significantly different, as would be expected.)Summary• Yes, there’s a correlation – a significant negative correlation• However, cross-tables show that in the real world of diagnosing children, the consequence of the association is small.  True, HEM is overwhelmingly TD, for both ethnicities, but among AAE LEM, proportion of LI the same as in any population: we don’t see an influence of “lack of explicit marking.”  • Among EurA children, there is a significantly greater than predicted probability that a LEM child has LI.  (Note, though, that even among EurA, almost 80% of LEM demonstrate typical development with implicit relationships.)• ANOVA:  EurA and AA similar pattern overall in average DELV-NR standard score (and also subscores).  HEM and LEM means around average (of 100).  HEM about 6 points above, LEM about 3 points below, nowhere near 1.5 standard deviations which would indicate impairment. Implications for practiceClinical implications• Goal to help children have language competence• May need more than morphosyntax –THEN WHAT?!• Equally important that we help language learners that are struggling with these more subtle things.Goals (of more reliance on implicit language features)• More nuanced and more explanatory characterization of impairment• Better able to identify how difficulty with subtle implicit relationships impact larger educational areas– Listening comprehension– Reading comprehension– Text analysis, etc.• Improved development of appropriate intervention goals and objectives.Questions???  Suggestions??References(We lean so heavily on materials from the DELV project, because, to our knowledge, there is no better source of information about both implicit and explicit grammatical relationships.  Let us know if you know one.)• Seymour, H. N., Roeper, T. & de Villiers, J. G. (2003). DELV-ST (Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation) Screening Test . San Antonio TX: Harcourt Assessments. (Now Ventris Learning, Sun Prairie WI)• Seymour, H. N., Roeper, T. & de Villiers, J. G. (2005). DELV-NR (Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation) Norm-Referenced Test . San Antonio TX: Harcourt Assessments. (Now Ventris Learning, Sun Prairie WI)• Seymour, H. N., Roeper, T. & de Villiers, J. G. (2000, unpublished). Dialect Sensitive Language Test (DSLT). San Antonio TX: The Psychological Corporation.• Seymour, H. N. & Pearson, B. Z. (Eds.) (February 2004). Evaluating language variation: Distinguishing development and dialect from disorder. Special issue of Seminars in Speech and Language, 25 (1) , NY: Thieme Medical Publishers.• Roeper, T. (2004). Diagnosing language variations: Underlying principles for syntactic assessment. Seminars in Speech and Language, 25 (1 ), 41-56.• Pearson, B. Z. (2004). Theoretical and empirical bases for dialect-neutral language assessment: Contributions from theoretical and applied linguistics to communication disorders. Seminars in Speech and Language, 25 (1 ), 13-26• Jackson, J. E. & Pearson, B. Z. (2010). Variable use of features associated with African American English by typically developing children ages 4 to 12. Topics in Language Disorders, 30 (2), 135-144• Jackson & Pearson (submitted). Developmental Trends for Features Contrastive between African American English and General American English• Pearson, B. Z., Conner, T. & Jackson, J. E. (2013). Removing obstacles for African American English speaking children through greater understanding of language difference. In special issue, "Deficit or difference: Interpreting diverse developmental paths." N. Akhtar & V. Jaswal (Guest Eds.), Developmental Psychology, 49 (1), 31-44.

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Morphosyntactic markers and abstract linguistic structure in language evaluation

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