LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 23:6 June 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

Celebrate India!
Unity in Diversity!!

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

Poetic Encounter
Available in https://www.amazon.in/dp/B09TT86S4T

Poems
Naked: the honest browsings of two brown women
Available in https://www.amazon.in

Decrees
Available in https://www.amazon.com

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2023
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

Transitives, Intransitives, Causatives and Sentence Types in
Malayalam Speaking Children with Intellectual Disability

Dr. Vini Abhijith Gupta, Ph.D. and Dr. T. A. Subbarao, Ph.D.

Abstract

Children with Intellectual Disability(CWID) demonstrated an increased performance with increased MA. Higher MA (5-6 years) group produced more sentences per turn and longer sentence length than the lower MA (4-5 years) group. Thus, language performance can be predicted based on what is known about syntax at between 4 and 6 years. It was generally noted that the CWID group produced few spontaneous sentences, i.e., sentences other than what the adult stimuli required. This suggests the possibility that CWID have limitations in the cognitive processing of linguistic input which may occur at the point of decoding, encoding or both. Such difficulties in accessing or recalling information and availability of stored information have been noted previously in the ID population CWID showed delayed development of syntax.The LARSP procedure has been adapted successfully to describe the language of CWID in Kannada (Kumaraswamy, 2021; Subbarao, 1995). The present study followed a similar methodology and described language (in terms of syntax skills) of Malayalam speaking CWID. The objectives of the study were analyzing their expression data on transitives, intransitives, causatives and sentence types. The description of Malayalam spoken syntactic structures was obtained from two sources, namely Grammar of Malayalam (Nair, 2012) and Malayalam - Descriptive Grammars (Asher, & Kumari, 1997). 60 CWID (4-6 years MA) were studied using natural conversational samples using toys , play materials, pictures. Transitives and intransitive verbs were used equally by CWID groups. Causative forms were used less by CWID groups. This is likely the result of causative forms used less frequently in spoken Malayalam variety of Malayalam sentence types were seen in CWID groups with comparable performance. Wh questions, adjectival use, declaratives were seen in all children. Interrogative sentence usage increased in the higher MA group indicating its developing nature. Generally, no complex sentence usage was observed. Syntax proved to be a difficult part of language performance in CWID.

Keywords: ID - Intellectual Disability,TD children-Typically Developing children, CWID- Children with Intellectual Disability, MA- Mental Age, LARSP- Language Assessment, Remediation and Screening Procedure

Language is a systematic and conventional use of sounds (or signs or written symbols) for the purpose of communication and self-expression (Crystal, 1995). The child who learns a language achieves the ability to recognize and produce a set of sounds and learns how these sounds can and cannot be combined into possible words. It is important to understand that language and the expression of the language are two different things. Language exists in the mind, and it exists if it is expressed or not.

The five language domains are phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Phonology is the study of speech sounds (i.e., phoneme) of a language, including the rules for combining and using them. Morphology is the study of the rules that govern how morphemes, the minimal meaningful units of language, are used in a language. Syntax is the study of rules that pertain to the ways in which words can be combined to form sentences in a language. Semantics is the study of meanings of words and combinations of words in a language. The final component Pragmatics is the study of language use in conversation and in broader social situations.

Among the five domains of language, syntax is considered as the central component. Knowledge of the syntactic system allows a speaker to generate an almost infinite number of sentences and to recognize which sentences are grammatical and which sentences are not.

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

Dr. Vini Abhijith Gupta, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dr. M. V. Shetty College of Speech and Hearing
Malady Court, Kavoor Mangalore-575015
Karnataka, India
vinimvstcosh@gmail.com

Dr. T. A. Subbarao, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. M. V. Shetty College of Speech and Hearing
Malady Court, Kavoor Mangalore-575015
Karnataka, India
drtasr.slp@gmail.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.