Title Comprehension of grammatical structures in Cantonese- speaking preschoolers a Cantonese adaptation of the test for reception of grammar Other Contributor(s) University of Hong Kong Author(s) Cheung, Mee-ping, Penita; 張美娉 Citation Issued Date 1993 URL http://hdl.handle.net/10722/56349 Rights This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.; The author retains all proprietary rights, such as patent rights and the right to use in future works.
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TitleComprehension of grammatical structures in Cantonese-speaking preschoolers a Cantonese adaptation of the test forreception of grammar
OtherContributor(s) University of Hong Kong
Author(s) Cheung, Mee-ping, Penita; 張美娉
Citation
Issued Date 1993
URL http://hdl.handle.net/10722/56349
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.; Theauthor retains all proprietary rights, such as patent rights andthe right to use in future works.
COMPREHENSION OF GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURES IN CANTONESE-SPEAKING PRESCHOOLERS : A Cantonese adaptation of the Test For Reception Of Grammar
CHEUNG MEE-PING, PENITA
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, April 30, 1993.
ABSTRACT
This study assessed the performance of preschoolers in understanding grammatical
contrasts in Cantonese, with a view to explore the order and age of acquisition. A total
of 152 children aged 3;6 to 5;11 were tested individually. A picture-choice task was
adapted from the Test for Reception of Grammar (TROG) (Bishop, 1982) in which subjects
chose appropriate pictures to match with spoken phrases/sentences among grammatical and
lexical distractors. Results revealed significant age differences in subjects1 scores;
older children obtaining more correct responses than their younger counterparts.
Although the course of syntactic comprehension development was gradual, three and a half
to four years of age appears to be the period of greatest achievement. A near-ceiling in
syntactic development was approached in children aged 5;11 years. When errors were
analysed, younger children showed a preference for lexical distractors while older
children chose more grammatical one; 42-47 months group being the watershed separating
grammatical from lexical groups. Regardless of age, preschool children adopted
comprehension strategies but types of strategies showed strong interaction with age.
Comprehension of syntactic structures in Cantonese followed a developmental order and
concurred with similar findings for English. By contrast, Cantonese preschoolers
acquired syntactic structures earlier and over a shorter period of time compared with
English-speaking children. The Cantonese test developed was found to discriminate among
children at different age levels. It also provided a preliminary assessment tool and,
with further extension, norms for the comprehension of grammar in Cantonese-speaking
preschoolers.
Grammar traditionally is divided into two parts : 1) morphology, or the addition and
substitution of word parts that modify meaning and 2) syntax, or the combining of words
to form phrases and sentences (Vren, 1985). In short, both parts embrace the netvork of
rules to organize linguistic expression (Crystal, Garman & Fletcher, 1989)*
During normal acquisition, young children need to acquire morphological and
syntactic knowledge in order to make sense of sentences they hear, without which
language would become "an incoherent jumble of vocabulary and sounds" (Crystal, Garman &
Fletcher, 1989, p.6) to them.
Development in young children is more than " a cumulative list of change and
accomplishments" (Owens, 1988, p.63) and the course to develop morphological and
syntactic knowledge is not an exception. Findings obtained from years of research and
longitudinal studies revealed several generalizations such as regularities in age and
order of acquisition in clausal, phrasal and morphological development. For example, the
order of emergence and age of mastery of the fourteen morphemes suggested by Brown
(1973) (Owens, 1988), and the syntactic developmental stages provided by the Language
Analysis, Remediation and Screening Procedure (LARSP) (Crystal, Garman, & Fletcher,
1989).
The period of greatest acquisition in the development of grammatical knowledge in
children was postulated to begin from early preschool years to late preschool years.
Reasearch by de Villiers & de Villiers (1982) revealed that by age of three years, the
first rule-bound morphemes are mastered by children which signals the start for
syntactic awareness. By the age of five, according to James (1990), grammatical errors
are less noticeable in children's speech which indicates that language development slows
down and arrives at the subtle refinement of language abilities in this stage.
Findings concerning the development of grammatical knowledge in children mentioned
so far cover only English.
Currently, little research has been done on the acquisition of Cantonese syntax in
children although there are valuable descriptive data of specific structures such as
classifiers (Eoke & Harrison, 1986; Makt 1991)- A more comprehensive study of syntactic
development of Cantonese-speaking preschool children was carried out by Kwong (1987).
1
However, this study dealt only with the expressive language. The developmental sequence
of grammatical comprehension in Cantonese-speaking children is still unknown and this
lack of knowledge is a handicap to professions working with children in Hong Kong and
other places where Cantonese is spoken.
Assume from research findings cited above, the present study aims to provide a
preliminary picture of the performance of Cantonese-speaking children's syntactic
comprehension from three years to six years old.
In response to research in English that yielded age-effects and predictable
sequence/pattern in syntactic acquisition, the present study, specifically, has the
motivation to provide answers to the following questions :
1) What are the age-related differences in the comprehension of grammar among Hong Kong
preschool children ?
2) Do differences in sex and birth order influence the comprehension of Cantonese
grammar in preschool children ?
3) Does preschool children's comprehension of Cantonese grammar follow a predictable
order ?
4) What are the characteristics of Cantonese syntactic structures that preschool
children can comprehend ?
DATA COLLECTION
1. METHOD
A picture-choice task was developed which required no verbal response from the
subjects. Children were asked to match a spoken phrase or sentence to one of four
pictures. The appropriate picture had to be chosen from three distractors which had been
carefully selected to contrast with the correct one grammatically and lexically (see
examples in Appendix 1). Such arrangement enabled the experimenter to obtain not only
the quantitative (correct scores) but also the qualitative (specific areas of strength
and weakeness) results through the interpretation of the types of errors made by
subjects.
This method was adapted from Test for Reception of.Grammar (TROG) which is a
standardized test developed by Bishop (1982). It was designed to assess the
2
understanding of grammatical contrasts in English-speaking children from four to twelve
years of age.
2. MATERIALS
A. ITEMS
The stimulus phrases or sentences items children heard were key aspects of Cantonese
grammar. Three steps were included in the development of the experimental version of the
items for the task :
a) To establish a framework in Cantonese syntax.
A literature review of studies in Cantonese syntax yielded that there are various
views concerning the analysis of Cantonese syntactic structures and not a single one is
comprehensive and systematic enough to describe all aspects of contemporary Cantonese.
In order to set up the theoretical basis for use to generate items in the study, an
"eclectic" framework of Cantonese, therefore, was developed by the experimenter.
Aspects of Cantonese syntax in Table 1 incorporated the work of several linguists in
Cantonese and their published approaches entitled Cantonese As Spoken In Hong Kong
(Cheung, 1972), JffJllff&Qfgg (Studies in Canton Dialect) (JS4^» 1980) and /jgjllffift
H (Teaching Cantonese) (JITIITK, 1989). References were added from frameworks or
descriptions suggested in Mandarin and English under the titles Mandarin Chinese (Li &
Thompson, 1981), A Grammar of Spoken Chinese (Chao, 1968), "i\i&%k&%ttl:%.l&n (The
system used for teaching syntax in secondary schools in Mainland China) (A E $£ if iJJ J!£ ?1 rlJ
^•tSX'M.* 1984) and A University Grammar of English (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973).
" • • REJECT ~ H - DENIAL - * - NONEXIST - ° - ' NOT NET
ii) Classifiers
Children were found to have acquired all types of classifiers at early age*
Interestingly enough, the shape classifier ({$) which seems to be the most commonly used
20
type was the most difficult one for children (Fig, 11). Both borroving classifier (<]B)
and container classifier (£[) were acquired at the age of 36-41 months, followed by
collective classifier (f»J) at the age 42-47 months, then last by shape classifier
(«5).
Fig. 11. The developmental order of Class i f iers
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY
36-41 42-47 48-53 54-59 60-85 66-71
AGE IN MONTHS "•*" SHAPE - + - BORROWING - * ~ CONTAINER - S - COLLECTIVE
iii) Preposition (locatives)
The order of acquisition of preposition (Fig. 12) in Oliiflfi), on (Jiiiil), under (Tilil)-
and behind (fulfil) confirmed those developed in English (Johnston & Slobin, 1973 cited
in Slobin 1985).
Fig. 12. The developmental order of Preposition (locatives)*
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY
1.0
0.6
0,6
- 5 * -
0.4
0,2 h
0.0
.-K"
• * = * - « • • ; • * - * • „^W
,X.X^", B
36-41 42-47 48-53 54-59 60-65 66-71
AGE IN MONTHS
In •"+•••• under - *~ on -Q- behind
21
DISCUSSION
Results in the present study reveal regularities in age and order of acquisition in
syntactic comprehension among Cantonese-speaking preschoolers. Three areas are worth
discussion in light of results; 1) conceptual development, 2) comprehension strategies
and 3) properties of Cantonese as an individual language.
A) THE PRIMACY OF CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT
A predictable order of syntactic development in Cantonese was reported in this study
and was compared with research in English. Although means of expression are different
among these two languages, common acquisitional sequences are revealed in similar
structures. For example, English uses "prepositions" to express locative relations (e.g.
"The pen is under the flower.") and Cantonese involves "postpositions" (e.g."~Jl*Mk~JC
)L Kifii ")» but their concurrence in the acquisitional trend is not affected. This
phenomenon was explained by Parisi & Antinucci (1970). They revealed conceptual
underpinnings of children's acquisition of locatives and postulated that children's
ability "to conceptualize spatial relations, moving from simple topological relations to
more complex projective relation" determines that common developmental sequence across
languages (Parisi & Antinucci, 1970 cited in Slobin, 1985, p.9).
Children's comprehension of three negation markers in Cantonese, cited in this
study, also followed a developmental order : "»,V (reject), "JM" (nonexistence), and wH/j
i'&n (denial). In fact, the same sequence of acquisition in negation markers in English
was postulated by Pea (1979) and he claimed that such sequence reflects different levels
of cognitive complexity required : "rejection" marker is the simplest as it expresses
children's emotional attitudes related to things present in the context and involves no
internal representation, hence is acquired first; "nonexistence" marker is the second as
internal representation is required when objects referred to is not present but expected
in the context; with "denial" marker the last because it needs internal representation
of a propositon and is cognitively more complex (Pea, 1979, cited in Slobin, 1985).
Hence it is another evidence for the importance of conceptual development in pacing the
course of syntactic development in children crosslinguistically.
22
B) THE EVIDENCE OF STRATEGIES
Strategies to comprehend sentences were applied regularly at all ages in the study,
especially to sentences children did not fully understand. Four major strategies were
identified during the test and three of them were relatively dominant in the two
youngest groups.
The "probable event strategy" (Chapman, 1977) was used by 36-41 months and 42-47
months groups in interpreting :
Item 36 : imimittXffiHtm Tall boy is chasing the horse.
da
c£ i. ~~""""'~'V<C!HL-
mS §
Incidence of specific error choices (chose
picture 4 instead of target picture 2)
among age-bands in months :
36-41 6
42-47 4
48-53 2
34-59 1
60-65 0
66-71 0
Based on semantic-pragmatic factors, these young preschoolers interpreted the
sentence according to their "scripts" of the most usual relation between objects (boy,
horse). They identified probable agent (boy) and patient (horse) but ignored the
syntactic cues (chase) which related "boy" and "horse" in a way that vas not consistent
with their experience (Chapman, 1977).
Although animate/inanimate distinction is not morphologically marked in Cantonese,
Cantonese-speaking children are not hindered to use the "animate-noun as agent strategy"
postulated by Kail (1989). During sentence comprehension in the study, three to three
and a half years old children tended to identify the lexical-semantic property of the
noun, checked for their animacy and assigned roles according to their animate-
agents/inanimate-patients rule. Such rule enabled younger children to make sense of
"irreversible active sentences" correctly like Item 13 : tWJlAi&*Mti%z (The man is
eating an apple.) This strategy vas not always helpful to them when both nouns in
23
"reversible active sentence" were animate and so good candidates for agents as in Item 34
: VWlttl^yim (The horse is chasing the dog). The developmental order of both types of
active sentences illustrated in Fig. 13 confirmed such phenomenon : there is "late"
acquisition of "reversible active sentences" by children at the age of four as compared
with "early" acquisition of "irreversible active sentences" at three years of age.
Fig. 13. The developmental order for "reversible active sentences" and their irreversible counterparts.
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY
38-41
AGE IN MONTHS IPREVERSIBL - * - iPREVERS'BL ' * - REVERSIBLE * « ~ REVERSIBLE
The strategy which some children from the youngest group used in the study was the
"intransitive-verb strategy" (Taylor & Taylor, 1990). They tended to treat transitive
verbs as intransitive and might not have the attempts to make one object act on the other
as in :
Item 52 : yi'\'WJ£\\i"l The cow is pushing brother
I 4-
Incidence of specific error choices
(chose picture 3 instead of the target
picture 1) among age-bands in months :
36-41 4
42-47 1
48-53 0
54-59 0
60-65 0
66-71 0
24
"Word-order" strategy (Paul, 1990) is dominating over other comprehension strategies
of English-speaking children since the canonical order of their language is
Subject-Verb-Objecfc (SVO). This happens to Cantonese* Firstly, Cantonese bears the same
kind of "standard order" as in English. Secondly, children, across all age groups in the
study used word order consistently to decode semantic relations in sentences. It is
consistent with Chapman1s saying that preschool years is the time when "linguistic
knowledge begins to take precedence over world knowledge" (Chapman, 1977).
Reliance on the canonical order- SVO allowed subjects in the study to interpret
majority active sentences correctly. But overreliance on assigning actor-action-object to
all noun-verb-noun sentence sequences led to incorrect interpretation of passive sentence
by reversing the roles between actor and object as in :
Item 95 : UJtkW£,»jiLl Sister is chased by the horse.
£v.
<&Kf ^v
f
Incidence of specific error choices
(chose picture 3 instead of the target
picture 1) among age-bands in months :
36-41 13
42-47 16
48-53 16
54-59 12
60-65 9
66-71 10
Observational data support the fact that subjects' misinterpretations of sentences
were systematic and consistent within their groups; different strategies at various
levels of development. At the age of three, children showed a very strong preference for
semantically (lexically) based strategies, but by the age of five, syntactic based
strategies became dominant.
Here some main comprehension strategies used by preschoolers were evaluated.
Although some of the explanation for the children's performance might have remained as a
matter of speculation, age related differences or sequence in their comprehension
25
strategies was confirmed which is, again, evidence of developmental universal pattern.
C) THE INFLUENCE OF LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC PROPERTIES
The present study have demonstrated strong evidence of "developmental universal
pattern" in the acquisition of syntax revealed by Slobin (1985). However,
language-specific effects was also found to have their way to cause differences in age
and period of acquisition between the two languages.
Fig. 14. Comparing developmental trends obtained by TROG and this study.
Reversible passive Comparative
A?S s'C-ns Age g-cjos — - to i sway - * - TPOQ ~~" fnu stuay - ° - TROG
Modified subjects Three elements % ot oofraei reaponaaa _ _ _ _ ^ _ _ _ , * oi correct nsaoonaw
3 36 4 4 6 6 55 6 3 3fi 4 «s e & 6
Age CC-DS Ags g-o-cs - * - Inn away - * - TROQ — • Tnu gtuoy — 7KOG
A more comprehensive picture of syntactic comprehension in English-speaking and
Cantonese-speaking children was obtained by comparing the developmental trends
postulated in English by TROG and in Cantonese by this study. Eight (see Appendix 8)
Cantonese grammatical constrasts corresponded to English syntactic structures were chosen
for illustration in Fig. 14. An examination on the graphical presentation indicated early
acquisition of all grammatical structures in Cantonese-speaking children. For example,
ninety percent of Cantonese-speaking children at the age of four can comprehend 3-element
sentences (SVO) while compared with the performance of English-speaking children with
matched age, a fifty percent was obtained. Even by the age of five, only seventy percent
of the English subjects in TROG responded correctly to SVOs and a ninety percent level
was achieved by the age of six. If age of mastery is set at .9 level of difficulty (90%
of the population responded correctly), then Cantonese-speaking children are found to
take one preschool year (preschool years started from three to six years of age) to
acquire SVOs but English-speaking children need three years of learning.
26
Vhen the TROG items were analysed, it was found that the property of a language
tended to facilitate or impede acquisition, hence lengthen or shorten the period of
acquisition, pace the age of acquisition at a earlier or later stage. Here is an example.
Late acquisitional items in TROG showed a common structural variable ~
involvement of postmodifying subject. Items using postmodifying subjects are relative
clauses and embedded sentences (see examples in Table 12).
"Postmodifying subject" is found to create much confusion in children during the
sentence comprehension process. According to Chomsky (1969), children at the age of five
to ten (a period when children were thought to have already acquired a full adult
grammar) tend to perceive relative clauses wrongly. She discovered that children
develop a rather "matured" syntactic strategy to comprehend complex sentence — the
minimal distance principle. Based on this principle, children assign the noun
immediately preceding the verb as the subject. However, as the postmodifying subject is
sited between the noun and the verb, a widened distance is established between these
two basic constituents, thus, affect the children's performance in comprehension.
In Cantonese, the lack of postmodifying functions to subject noun phrases ease the
Cantonese-speaking children from handling problematic relative clauses and embedded
sentences. Modification (see examples in Table 12) of the noun phrase in Cantonese is
sited in the front of the noun, hence the distance between the noun and the verb is not
affected, and less confusion is created during interpretation.
Table 12. Constrasting premodification function in Cantonese with postmodification function in English.
English examples : Cantonese examples :
"The boy chasing the horse is fat." *fl oR&frffiffff fill!! "The square is in the star that is blue." MlilM W fliHWJEff Jg&fe& "The cat the cow chases is black" i W O j | i ! c l i & i f i
The developmental trends illustrated in Fig. 14 confirmed that SVO with expansion
at the subject noun phrase are acquired earlier by Cantonese-speaking children. Vith the
confusion created by the post-modifying function to subject noun phrases,
English-speaking children acquire the matched structures at late age (about ten years of
age).
27
CONCLUSION
To summarize, the findings from the present study suggested that :
1) There is strong support that syntactic comprehension ability is associated with age.
Although the course of development is gradual, three and a half years of age is a
somewhat critical period for achievement.
2) The younger groups tend to have a marked preference for lexical cues while the older
groups relied on grammatial cues. The onset of grammatical development in children is
believed to be at 42-47 months.
3) The developmental order of syntactic structures in Cantonese is predictable and
agreed generally with those cited in English. The language-specific features in
Cantonese exert influence to the overall acquisitional sequence of grammatical contrasts
in which children acquired basic structures earlier and over a shorter period of time as
compared with English.
4) Comprehension strategies used by Cantonese speaking children were also found for
English. These strategies showed strong interaction with age.
IMPLICATIONS
A preliminary order of Cantonese syntactic structure in the course of development in
children is acquired. The test developed in the study is found to be sensitive in
discriminating children at different age and ability level (see cases in Appendix 9)
Here, data collected in this study can be regarded as a protocol basis for
developing an assessment tool to examine syntactic comprehension ability in
Cantonese speaking preschoolers. This assessment tool should not only provide
quantitative data such as an age equivalent or total scores for children tested
but also qualitative data such as the level of breakdown, specific strength and
deficits of the children in relation to syntactic development.
The usefulness of exploring the strategies of children in their understanding of
sentences is the application for the disordered population. The question being raised
and not yet answered empirically is "whether comprehension strategies should be taught
to children who fail to use them spontaneously". If it is the case, what strategies
should be taught, "age equivalent" strategies or "adult strategies" ?
28
According to Paul (1987), those no-strategy children should be helped by "attempts
to provide chances for them to process sentences slightly above their current level of
functioning". He also suggested different approaches to help disabled children in
learning strategies and the starting point for training would be the clinician to accept
children's "strategy-based responses as adequate rather than their responding correctly"
(Paul, 1987 cited in Paul 1990).
The empirical data collected in this study concerning strategies normal children use
will take a part in all stages of treatment. Firstly, they can discriminate whether the
strategies children rely on are age-appropriate. Secondly, they can help charting
changes in children's performance throughout the treatment program such as the
transition from reliance on world knowledge to decontextualized understanding of
linguistic form. Such information can serve as a guide to the path children with
language handicaps follow to acquire more mature communicative skills.
IMPLICATION FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
The scale of the present test is still small and further normative data need to be
sought. It will be valuable to conduct the test on more subjects from the existing age
bands. In addition the test can be extended to older groups in order to determine the
performance ceiling in children and the application of the items in disordered
populations can be extended for clinical use. Continuous modification on the items is
expected during this process. This would help to bring an reliable/valid assessment tool
for the testing of syntactic comprehension in Cantonese to come about.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author gratefully acknowledge the principals, teachers and children from the following kindergartens and school for their assistance and cooperation during data collection :
Tack Ching Kindergarten Sean Jean Kindergarten Vestgarden Grace Kindergarten Ho Fai Primary School (MaOnShan)
The author would like to express thanks to Professor Ann Zubrick, Dr. Godfrey Harrison, Dr. Valter Ciocca and Mr. Samuel Leung for their suggestions and advices.
Lastly, the author would like to thank Mr. Tam Koo-yin, her husband, for his
psychological and technical support during the study.
29
REFERENCES
Bishop, D. (1982). Test for reception of grammar. University of Manchester.
Chao, Y.R. (1968). A grammar of spoken Chinese. University of California Press.
Chapman, R. (1977). Comprehension strategies in children. In J. Kavanaugh & V. Strange (Eds). Language in the laboratory, school and clinic. Cambridge : MIT Press.
Cheung, H.L. (1972). Cantonese as spoken in Hong Kong. The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Chomsky, C. (1969)* The acquisition of syntax in children from 5 to 10. Cambridge : MIT Press. —
Crystal, D., Carman, M., & Fletcher, P. (1989). Grammatical analysis of language disability. London : Cole & Vhurr.
de Villiers, J. G., & de Villiers, P. A. (1982). Language acquisition. Cambridge : Havard University Press.
James, S.L. (1990). Normal language acquisition. Boston : Little Brown company.
Kail, M. (1989). Cue validity, cue cost, and processing types in sentence comprehension in French and Spain. In B. MacWhinney & E. Bates (Eds). The crosslinguistic study of sentence processing. Cambridge : Cambridge Univerity Press.
Kwong, S. M. (1987). The syntactic development of Cantonese-speaking preschool children. In S. Opper (Eds). Development of Hong Kong preschool education. University of Hong Kong.
Lee, L. (1992, April). Understanding of negation in Cantonese speaking children. Dissertation paper presented in the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences, HKU.
Li, C.N., & Thompson, S.A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese. Berkeley : University of California Press.
Loke, K. K. & Harrison, G. (1986). Young children's use of Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) sortal classifiers. In H.S.R. Kao & R. Hoosain (Eds). Lingusitics, psychology, and the Chinese language. University of Hong Kong.
Mak, D. (1991, November). Acquisition of Cantonese shape classifiers. Paper presented at the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences, HKU.
Owens, R.E. (1988). Language development : an introduction. Columbus : Merrill
Publishing Co.
Paul, R. (1990). Comprehension strategies : Interactions between world knowledge and the development of sentence comprehension. Topics in language disorders, 10.(5)» 63-75.
Quirk, R. & Greenbaum, S. (1973). A university grammar of English. Hong Kong : Longman.
Slobin, D.I. (1985) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition V.I : The data London : lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Inc.
Taylor, I., & Taylor, M.M. (1990). Psycholinguistics : learning and using language.
Englewood Cliffs : Prentice Hall.
Wren, C.Y. (1983). Language learning disabilities. London : ASPEN publication.
AK®fflllKK*l'l'TO£35. (1984). • I "Wft ;.'?&&*&.
•fjii r-. (1980). ifijiiarftpfft. s&iflussniaiin.
ttinsp^wiMffi^f/aitn^nft. (1989). m ^ x v i n w ^ a
jms?. d989). jajo&ff.. JAJII : *V]k-kmwm\..
APPENDIX 1. A SAMPLE FROM THE PICTURE-CHOICE TASK.
<2^x >i^
4-
a
The spoken sentence is J£'Mil !?* lit 3ty H n e horse is chasing the dog). The correct
choice is picture 2. Picture 1 and 4 are lexical distractors vith error both at the
clause level-subject and object position respectively• Picture 3 is a grammatical
distractor at Clause level in which subject and object are being reversed.
APPENDIX^ 2^ THE CHARACTERS IN THE TEST
Five characters are created in the test, they are members of the family.
They are father, mother, brother, sister and baby.
FATHER MOTHER ELDER BROTHER
YOUNGER SISTER
BABY
APPENDIX 3. THE 104 TEST ITEMS
SI". (Ml !!!•
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APPENDIX 4. INSTRUCTIONS AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE TEST
Administration of the test :
1. Introducing the characters.
a. Characters created by the experimenter are introduced to the child before the actual
test is administered.
(The experimenter)
"First, I would like to introduce to you some people. Here ve are (pointing to the
characters). This is father, mother, elder brother, younger sister, and this is the
baby.
Now, can you remember who they are."
mt, MM'i-DAWfi*. (mwMJi). o m ^ t S , J W , mm* UMC, « . m&mT<$
mmrmwji: b. The child is asked to say out the "name" of the characters.
(The experimenter)
"Now look at them once again. Remember their face. They will be hiding somewhere in
the following pictures. Listen to what I say and you can find them out."
2. Instructing the task.
(The expermenter)
Open the picture book and give the child some seconds to scan the pictures. "Look we
have four pictures here, point to what I say. Listen carefully". Say out the
phrase/sentence and record the answer. "Yes. Now I am going to show you more pictures.
Again listen carefully and point to what I say."
When the child's response is consistent, the instruction will be omitted. Only the
phrase/sentence is spoken after the child is allowed to scan all four pictures.
As a reminder to the child, for every ten pictures, the instruction will be
repeated. "So far, you have been a good boy/girl. Nov I will shov you another four
pictures, look at them all and point to what I say."
For Item 19, 20, 48 and 65, the instruction is "Here ve have four pictures, point to
something which is 'ONE CLASSIFIER CLASSIFER1-"
3. Repeating the items.
The items are repeated if requested. When the child does not respond after five
seconds, the item will be repeated. A maximum of three times of repetition is allowed.
4. Scoring.
The child's response is recorded in the box next to the Items. The exact number of
pictures the child chooses are written down.
When the child refuses to response after three repetition. A no-response is recorded
as "0" in the box which will be regarded as incorrect response.
5. Using vocabulary check.
All children from the 36-41 months group are asked to do the vocabulary test. The
child is asked to name the pictures, for any items that the child is not able to name,
the experimenter will ask the child to point to the picture spoken.
Any children from the other groups who are suspected of having difficultis with the
vocabulary in the test, they will do the vocabulary check after the test has been
administered.
APPENDIX 5 . THE VOCABULARY CHECK
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APPENDIX 6^ _DIFraCjaTLMPELiMj_gIGNIFICANT LEVEL OF 104 ITENS
STRUCTURE
CATEGORY
group 1 A
A C A G U X L C I R E F F P R L B C G H B D P J C K G
group 2 B J N 0 A F H L U X H K L V 0 B R Y ¥ N N Z X
Plurality Reversible active % of co'rert responses
Age gtups This stuoy ~ ° " TPOG
» o' correct responses
APPENDIX 9. TWO JSAMPLES FROM THE STAGE^ TWO PROCEDURES TQ ILLUSTRATE SENSITIVITY OF THE TEST ITEMS.
Case 1. Child aged 5;2 (Male)
The ceiling item (according to five errors in eight consecutive items) is 50. This is the point which is most discriminable for children between 56-41 months and 42-47 months. Hence the child's age is predicted correctly.
Case 2. Child aged 5;4 (Female)
The ceiling item (according to five errors in eight consecutive items) is 60. This is at 48-55 months level. The child is found to have one year behind in her syntactic comprehension ability. Discussion with her teacher revealed that her poor performance in the test is correlated to her poor academic attainment level. She has experience long period of hospitalization.
1 HON OF m m STRUCTURES E - S P I i PRESCHOOLERS
RPPPA m%
BY CHEUNG MEE PING, PENITA 1993
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