LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 14:1 January 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Expressive Bound Morphemes in Malayalam Speaking Children
with Down Syndrome

Maria Grace Treasa, Ph.D. Research Scholar
Prof. Shyamala K. Chengappa, Ph.D.

Abstract

This study is an attempt to examine expressive bound morphemes of Malayalam in 10 children, aged 6-18 years, with Down Syndrome (DS) as compared to 10 typically developing (TD) mental age matched controls. All the participants were having an expressive language level of two-word utterances and were native speakers of Malayalam. The productive use of six high-frequency nominal inflections of - Plural /kal/, Accusative /e/, Locative /il/, Genitive /ute/, / Dative case markers kk?/ & /n?/ and Conjunction /um/ was investigated using elicited Sentence Imitation Test in Malayalam (SIT-M, Treasa & Shyamala, 2013). Results revealed that DS group obtained significantly (p<0.05) poorer scores than the controls on all the subtests of SIT-M except on accusative case marker /e/. This suggests specific bound morpheme errors in children with DS which could serve as targets for grammatical morphology intervention.

Key Words: Down syndrome (DS), sentence imitation, grammatical morphology

Introduction

"Since I have Down syndrome I can teach my big brother how to work harder and never quit." - Eden Rapp (2009)The above quote by a 12 year old individual with Down syndrome (DS) eloquently shows that despite the challenges they face, individuals with DS possess good pragmatic skills.

Review of Literature

Down syndrome is the major genetic cause of intellectual disability, occurring in approximately 1 in 700 live births (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2006). Though there is considerable individual variability, individuals with DS have a distinctive profile of linguistic abilities. Receptive language is typically stronger than expressive language (Caselli, et al., 1998; Chapman, Hesketh, & Kistler, 2002; Laws & Bishop, 2003), with phonology and morphosyntax presenting particular difficulties. Review of past literature also indicates special focus on emergence of grammatical morphology in DS.

Another study by Price et al. (2007) found that boys (N=45) with DS scored lower on comprehension of grammatical morphology (prepositions and bound morphemes) than younger typically developing boys of similar nonverbal mental age. Considerable evidence points to productive syntax deficits in young individuals with DS that cannot be explained by cognitive level. The emergence of two-word combinations is delayed in young children with DS (Iverson et al., 2003), and children and adolescents with DS continue to produce shorter and less complex utterances than typically developing children of the same nonverbal mental age as they get older (Caselli et al., 2008; Chapman et al., 1998; Price et al., 2008; Rosin et al., 1988).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Maria Grace Treasa, Ph.D. Research Scholar
tgracemaria@gmail.com

Prof. Shyamala K.Chengappa, Ph.D.
shyamalakc@yahoo.com

Department of Speech-Language Pathology
All India Institute of Speech and Hearing
Manasagangothri
Mysore 570006
Karnataka
India
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