PRESCHOOLERS DEVELOPING MORPHOSYNTACTIC SKILLS Power Point Outline

PRESCHOOLERS’ DEVELOPING MORPHOSYNTACTIC SKILLS

Power Point Outline** • I. Mastering Grammatical Morphemes • II. Developing Syntactic Elements • III. Basic Sentence Structure

I. MASTERING GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES

Morpheme Age of Mastery

To assess children’s morphosyntactic skills:

Words vs. morphemes** • We wanted to eat cookies. • 5 words • 7 morphemes • The PRAXIS always asks you to count the # of morphemes in an utterance

How many morphemes? ** • The three boys wanted five candies. • We played all day with my friend’s toys. • He’s going to cook eggs and bacon.

Count the morphemes in Mark Mc. Kibbin’s utterances: ** • (2. 5 yrs old) “I need to get my shoes and socks on because the stones will hurt my feet. ” • (3 yrs old) “I will give my old pillow to the poor children so they can sleep better. ” • (3 yrs. old) “Madame Blueberry was sad because they didn’t have happy hearts at the Stuffmart. ”

II. DEVELOPING SYNTACTIC ELEMENTS • A. Basic Sentence Constituents

2. Clause

3. Sentence

4. Noun phrase

5. Verb phrase

• **The little red hen • NP • The students – NP The leaves NP The baby NP was eating corn. VP are taking notes. VP were falling down. VP was laughing at the dog. VP

Youtube • Weird Al Yankovich grammar

B. Noun Phrase Elements

The derivational noun suffix - er

C. Verb Phrase Elements

Copula verbs– to be verbs that serve syntactically as the main verbs in sentences

More examples of copula verbs: ** • He is a boy scout. • They were in their car. • I am happy.

By 5 years of age…** • Children have mastered most verb forms

Youtube examples… • 5 year old Gus— typically developing • 8 year old with mixed expressive language disorder

III. BASIC SENTENCE STRUCTURE (review) • A. Types of Sentences

3. Passive

4. Negative

B. Complex and Compound Sentences

• 1. Complex sentence: Has indep. clause and dependent clause** • We will go to the party if it is not raining. • (main/indep. clause) (subordinate/dep. clause) I talked to the boy (main/indep. clause) who has red hair. (subordinate/dep. clause)

• 2. **Compound sentence: 2 independent clauses are linked together by a conjunction • We ate cookies and they were good. – (main/indep. clause) – John liked her but she didn’t like him. – (main/indep. clause)

Coordinating conjunctions:

Examples of sentences using coordinating conjunctions in compound sentences: ** • I wanted to get an A on the test, so I studied hard. • We could eat popcorn or we could have Doritos. • She wanted to go shopping, but she didn’t have any money.

** • Rescorla, L. , & Turner, H. L. (2015, April). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 58, 434 -444. • This study looked at late talkers (at age 2) in comparison to typically-developing children • Late talkers usually understand what they hear, but they are late in developing expressive language

The study found:

Thus…

Power Point Outline** • I. Mastering Grammatical Morphemes • II. Developing Syntactic Elements • III. Basic Sentence Structure

Halloween Morphology Haunted House! • Take an index card and 4 post-its • On the back of the card, write 4 verbs, 4 nouns, and 4 adjectives that have to do with Halloween • On the front of the card, under each post-it, write a bound morpheme (the post-its are the windows of the haunted house )

Get into pairs and take turns being the child and therapist: • Make as many words as you can with the bound morphemes and the nouns, verbs, and adjectives