Morphosyntax in Child Language Disorders

Children with Down syndrome, like children with specific language impairment, present more difficulties with morphosyntax than is expected given their chronological age, nonverbal mental age, vocabulary ability, and mean length of utteranc; their grammatical errors also primarily involve omissions. Given the numerous deficits children with developmental language disorders experience, clinicians must consider the extent to which morphosyntax is a priority for a given child. Despite its time-consuming nature, language sampling remains the mainstay of authentic, ecologically valid assessment. A large literature base of studies have examined the morphosyntactic deficits of children with language impairments, and comparison studies across etiologies and co-occurring disorders have begun to appear in the literature. A central assumption of norm-referenced test interpretation is that children with language impairments will demonstrate below-average performance. Despite its time-consuming nature, language sampling remains the mainstay of authentic, ecologically valid assessment.