Developmental assessment of Spanish grammar.

DEVELOPMENTAL ASSESSMENT SPANISH GRAMMAR

OF

Allen S. Toronto Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos

The Developmental Assessment of Spanish Grammar (DASG) provides a language analysis procedure for Spanish-speaking children similar to the Developmental Sent e n c e Scoring (DSS) procedure in English. The DASG is not an attempted translation of the DSS but was developed independently, taking into consideration the present knowledge of Spanish language acquisition. The purpose of the DASG is to e v a l u a t e the language of children with deficient grammatical skills in Spanish and to serve as a model for structuring Spanish language therapy. Proposed syntactic hierarchies for the following six grammatical categories are presented: indefinite p r o n o u n s a n d n o u n modifiers, personal pronouns, primary verbs, secondary verbs, conjunctions, and int e r r o g a t i v e words. Weighted scores are assigned to groups of structures within the hierarchies and are used to score Spanish sentences children use spontaneously in conversation with an adult. The DASG was standardized on 128 Spanish-speaking children between the ages of 3.0 and 6.11 years. Norms and reliability measures are presented.

T h e Developmental Assessment of Spanish Grammar (DASG) is among the few language analysis procedures in Spanish that have been developed specifically for native American Spanish-speaking children. It is designed to evaluate the language of children with deficient grammatical skills and to serve as a model for structuring language remediation. T h e DASG may be very useful in periodically assessing the progress of children who are enrolled in language intervention programs, though such programs in Spanish are scarce. It provides an analysis os some of the major syntactic structures as they occur in children's spontaneous speech when in conversation with an adult. This evaluation procedure may be most valuable as a follow-up evaluation of Spanishspeaking children who fail to perform at age level on the Screening Test of Spanish Grammar (Toronto, 1973). T h e screening test is designed to identify rapidly children with possible language deficiencies in Spanish, while the DASG is a more detailed analysis of grammatical performance that may serve as a basis for recommending specific language therapy procedures. T h e DASG employs a language analysis method similar to the Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) procedure in English developed by Lee and Canter (1971) and Koenigsknecht and Lee (1971). T h e names of the grammatical 150

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TORONTO: Spanish Grammar Assessment 151

categories, the method of grouping structures, and the statistical procedures were borrowed from the DSS. It must be emI:,hasized, however, that the DASG is not an attempted translation of Lee, Canter, and Koenigsknecht's procedure, but that it was developed independently of the DSS, taking into account present knowledge of Spanish language acquisition. T h e DASG was standardized with Mexican-American and Puerto Rican children in an u r b a n community. T h e r e were no significant differences between the performances of these two ethnic groups whose dialects were considerably different. This observation leads the author to conclude that basic development of Spanish syntax is stable for all Spanish-speaking groups. T h e norms in this report, therefore, probably present a fairly good estimate of any Spanish-speaking child's grammatical performance, regardless of his ethnicity. DEVELOPMENT

OF THE DASG

T h e DASG is a technique which assigns weighted scores to proposed developmental syntactic hierarchies of six grammatical categories from a sample of 50 sentences obtained from a child's speech in conversation with an adult. T h e procedure purports to measure in part the development of syntactic complexity of children's language and in addition takes into account the length of children's utterances. T h e DASG evaluates a child's grammatical performance in spontaneous speech as measured against adult Spanish. T h e r e are many syntactic features that could be included in a scoring procedure such as the DASG, but use of many features is impractical. Only six syntactic categories are employed because of their apparent developmental qualities as shown in previous studies (Kernan and Blount, 1966; Gonzales, 1970; Toronto, 1972), and their early appearance in child language. These categories are: (1) indefinite pronouns and noun modifiers, (2) personal pronouns, (3) primary verbs, (4) secondary verbs, (5) conjunctions, and (6) interrogative words. T h r e e additional syntactic features-possessives, plurals, and negatives-are partially taken into account by their inclusion within each of the above categories. Many times when a syntactic element within the six major categories is altered by one of these three features, it receives extra points because it takes on added complexity. Several steps were involved in developing the final syntactic hierarchies which are used for the DASG. T h e first task was to select a hypothetical rank order of the development of syntactic elements in a child's language within each grammatical category for initial test construction. Several procedures were followed in establishing the initial hierarchies: 1. Two studies were available on Spanish language acquisition by native American Spanish-speaking children which gave some objective indication of possible rank orders of syntactic elements. Gonzalez (1970) completed a study with the purpose of providing grammatical information for use in guidelines in planning ct:rriculum for elementary schools and preschool programs for Spanish-speaking children. He


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has described the Spanish language performance of 24 bilingual children from Texas between the ages of two and five who had conversational proficiency in Spanish. Kernan and Blount (1966) created a test of syntactic and morphological gTowth for Mexican children following the work of Berko (1958). Berko's ingenious procedure of presenting unfamiliar pictures to a child and requiring production of nonsense words which tested internalization of specific syntactic and morphological rules was pursued. These studies gave some indication of how to structure several of the initial hierarchies. 2. The universality of language and the apparent similarity of concept formation between Spanish and English allowed limited use of developmental studies in English for predicting the logical sequence of Spanish syntax acquisition. Lee, Canter, and Koenigsknecht's hierarchies of syntactic development for the DSS were used in some cases for comparisons of similar structures in Spanish and their hypothetical development. Tentative rank orders of elements were constructed using the information from the above studies and the Spanish-English comparisons. 3. "/'he tentative syntactic hierarchies were presented to six educated, fluent Spanishspeakers who had experience with children's language development. Each speaker was asked to judge the difficulty of the syntactic items on a scale from one to eight. These intuitive judgments were considered in initially revising the hierarchies. 4. A pilot study was then completed in which spontaneous language samples from eight normal Mexican-American Spanish-speaking children between the ages of three and six were gathered. Detailed descriptive and statistical analysis of these speech samples led to many necessary changes in the tentative hierarchies, and revised rank orders were constructed. The revised hierarchies were then incorporated into a scoring system in which numerical weights were assigned to different groups of syntactic elements in the rank order. In a second study, the scoring system was applied to spontaneous speech samples of a group of Spanish-speaking children in order to determine the reliability and validity of the procedure and to refine and revise the syntactic hierarchies further. Subjects for this investigation were 48 children, two boys and two girls in each three-month age interval between the ages of three years and five years 11 months. All subjects were of Mexican descent, Spanish was the primary language spoken at home, all had normal hearing, and all were from the same inner-city neighborhood in Chicago. Spontaneous speech samples, using fixed stimulus materials, were obtained and transcribed by two experienced Spanish-speaking persons. Fifty sentences were taken from each sample, and the scoring system based on the revised developmental system was applied for analysis. I determined through split-half and test-retest reliability measures that the revised scoring system was reliable. In addition, analyses of variance indicated that the revised scoring system did measure increases in children's use of more complex syntactic structures and concomitantly measured increases in children's length of utterance. Statistical procedures which were applied to the data from the 48 subjects indicated some necessary changes in the rank order of elements within the hierarchies. These revisions produced the final syntactic hierarchies and scoring system used in the DASG presented in the Appendix. A detailed description of the construction of the tentative hierarchies and the statistical and sampling procedures is presented by T o r o n t o (1972).



INSTRUCTIONS

AND

PROCEDURES

Stimulus Materials Stimulus materials for elicitation of spontaneous speech samples can be any material of interest to the child and should consist of objects within the child's realm of experience. T h e urban children in the development of the DASG related much better to toy houses and furniture with which they had firsthand contact than to a farm setting and toy farm animals. Materials for the standardization of the DASG consisted of toy furniture which could be arranged within an open playhouse and sequential pictures which depicted simple stories. It was generally found that children did not respond as well to single pictures of preschool children at play as they did to the sequential story pictures. T h e tape recorder which was used to record the speech sessions and which was always within reach of the children provided a good stimulus for conversation. T h e effects of different stimulus materials on spontaneous speech are not known, and strict recommendations cannot be given. T h e most important consideration is that the materials represent something familiar to the child. In development of the DASG it was found best to begin the speech sample by playing with the toys and to terminate with the pictures.

Eliciting Spontaneous Speech For the purpose of the DASG, spontaneous speech is defined as speech which is initiated by the child in response to questioning or speech which the child himself initiates in the presence of the examiner. Child-adult interaction is necessary in this procedure because of controls needed in the standardization and for the practical reason that most language evaluations are completed with an adult testing a child. Also, language-deficient children in a clinical setting seldom talk by themselves and only occasionally talk with each other; therefore, a clinician is needed to elicit speech samples (Lee and Canter, 1971). Fifty sentences are adequate for DASG analysis and constitute a reasonable corpus of sentences from language-deviant children. Eliciting 50 scorable sentences takes about 15 minutes with a talkative child, while for a child who is relatively quiet, the recording session may take as long as 30 minutes. T h e goal in recording should be to obtain a corpus of 100 sentences of which the last 50 will be analyzed. Establishing rapport is especially important in working with lower socioeconomic Spanish-speaking children because of their general reluctance to talk to strangers. T h e following suggestions will help in establishing rapport and in maintaining a flow of speech throughout the recording session: 1. The examiner should position himself on the same level as the child, preferably on the floor. Examining on low children's furniture is acceptable, but a child


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seems to be more comfortable where he can freely manipulate the stimulus materials and move about. Constant questioning of the child tends to decrease spontaneous speech and should be avoided. Instead, the examiner should comment on the stimulus materials and try to elicit voluntary comments from the child. When the examiner does ask questions, he should avoid asking those which require a one-word response from the child, such as "Where is the car?", "What's this?", and "Who is in the chair?" Questions such as "What is he saying?", "How is he going to do that?", and "What do you think is going to happen?" are effective in eliciting complete sentences. The examiner should avoid giving direct commands to the children. Adults have a tendency when speaking with children to command them to act. This tendency almost becomes irresistable in eliciting spontaneous speech from a child who does not readily talk in the recording session. Aggravated commands such as "Look at the picture," "Tell me about it," and most commonly "Talk to me," generally cause the quiet child to withdraw further from the examiner and hinder spontaneous output. It is best to change these commands to suggestions for both the examiner and the child. The above commands could be changed to "Let's look at the picture," and "Let's talk about this," or they could be avoided altogether. The tendency to repeat what the child has just said constantly should also be avoided. This may be difficult if the recording environment is noisy or if the child is difficult to understand, but repeating what the child says seems to hinder an automatic flow of speech. When looking at pictures it is helpful to relate the first part of a story pertaining to the picture to the child and to have him tell the examiner what happens next. This procedure provides a speech model for the child and gives the unimaginative child something to talk about.

Sentence Selection for Scoring A f t e r a speech sample from a child has been recorded, it is t r a n s c r i b e d in its entirety, i n c l u d i n g the clinician's comments. T h o u g h only the child's sentences are scored, the clinician's c o m m e n t s are necessary to evaluate the context of a child's utterances. W h e n the r e c o r d i n g tape has been transcribed, the process of sentence selection for scoring begins. T h e D A S G requires a corpus of 50 s p o n t a n e o u s sentences w h i c h are complete, consecutive, intelligible, different, a n d nonecholalic. A complete sentence is defined as one h a v i n g a subject a n d a verb or a c o n j u g a t e d verb w i t h a n i m p l i e d o p t i o n a l n o u n or p r o n o u n as subject. T h e following sentences are complete: El viene, Viene dl, a n d Viene. I n d e p e n d e n t clauses are c o u n t e d as sentences w h e n f o u n d in the midst of fragments, t h o u g h the f r a g m e n t s are not i n c l u d e d in scoring. For example, in the u t t e r a n c e A qui, pero no sd lo que es, only the clause N o sd lo que es is i n c l u d e d for scoring purposes. M a n y times, in asking a child a question, such as ~Qud le dice la roared? he m a y answer w i t h Que venga a comer or Que no vaya. D e p e n d e n t clauses like those b e g i n n i n g w i t h que or para que, w h i c h occur f r e q u e n t l y in Spanish are elliptical a n d are not c o u n t e d as complete sentences. T h e same is the case for indirect questions such as donde va a n d como hacerlo in response to the question ~Qud quiere

saber el ni~o? Consecutive sentences are used in the corpus to avoid selecting only the best



utterances in a child's speech sample. It is generally found that a child's last 50 sentences are higher scoring than the first 50, but the sentences may be extracted from any part of the child's sample as long as they are consecutive. Utterances which are incomplete or unintelligible are omitted from the sample and consecutive counting resumes from the last complete sentence. Sentences should be different in order to obtain a fair sampling of a child's speech and to avoid the scoring of stereotyped utterances. Any sentence that is repeated should be scored only once. Expressions such as es que sometimes occur as stereotypes before many sentences and are also only scored once as a verb and conjunction in a given sample of 50 sentences. For example, children often say Es que no quiero and Es que se llama Maria, using Es que like the expressions pues and bueno. In these cases, es que is scored once and thereafter eliminated while the novel part of the utterance is retained for scoring purposes. If a child's utterance is unintelligible because of low vocal intensity, disfluency, or articulation errors, it is omitted from the corpus. Care should be taken not to penalize a child for articulation errors. Repetitions of what the examiner says (echolalic sentences) are omitted from the corpus because they are not spontaneous. However, if a child in attempting to repeat the examiner's utterance changes the sentence in any way, it is included in the corpus. Bilingual children often use a mixture of Spanish and English words, and sentences in which English words occur should be omitted from the corpus. These types of sentences occurred rarely in the standardization population of the DASG. A child who speaks more English than Spanish will mix languages readily, but these types of children were not included as subjects in the standardization. It is possible to analyze sentences which contain both Spanish and English words because the DASG deals primarily with grammatical structures, and the majority of language mixing occurs with vocabulary items. It must be stressed that an utterance which is omitted from the final corpus of 50 sentences is still very important in analyzing grammatical performance, and that it is omitted only for scoring purposes. A descriptive grammatical analysis of all utterances is of utmost importance in any language evaluation, especially if language intervention is being considered.

Rules for Scoring At some point a child attains adult grammatical proficiency, and it is, therefore, assumed that grammar is constantly developing until that time. This justifies the use of adult Spanish grammar as a model to judge the correctness of grammatical performance in children. Admittedly, it is difficult to judge what the correct adult grammar of a community is unless the clinician is a native member of that group. On the other hand, the grammatical differences which are idiosyncratic to a particular Spanish-speaking group are very few in comparison to the generally accepted grammatical rules of Spanish. T h e grammatical elements evaluated in the DASG are used in all Spanish-speaking


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communities and for the most part are used with a common and consistent set of rules. For example, gender, number, and person agreements which are frequently confused in child language are rarely confused in general adult Spanish, and when they are confused, they are recognized as errors. Any grammatical element in a child's speech sample of 50 sentences which is known to be grammatically incorrect is counted as an error and does not receive any points. T h e structures in this procedure are defined by their use and function in a sentence and may violate some of the traditional terminology used to describe Spanish grammar. For instance many of the structures listed as conjunctions may also be used as prepositions, adverbs, and interrogative words. Only if they are used to conjoin sentences or nouns are they counted as conjunctions while when used in other capacities, they are analyzed according to their function in the sentence. T h e elements of each grammatical hierarchy which are grouped and assigned weighted scores are in the Appendix. All elements within a scoring group were judged of similar difficulty and complexity, and the higher scoring elements are later developing forms in Spanish. Indefinite Pronouns and N o u n Modifiers. In order for a pronoun to receive points in this category, it must agree in number with the corresponding verb. A noun modifier must agree in number and gender with the noun it modifies. T h e elements in this category are scored when used as pronouns or as noun modifiers. For example, esta is given a score of two in the sentences Esta no me gusta and Esta comida no me gusta. In other words, these elements are always scored when they occur in a sentence. An exception must be made, however, with the pronouns una and la because these same words may act as articles which are not scored, as in the sentences Yo quiero una galIeta and Yo quiero Ia galleta. Any plural indefinite pronoun or noun modifier receives a score of four. At the scoring level of four and above, plural pronouns are given the same weights as the singular pronouns. Personal Pronouns. This category includes personal, reflexive, and relative pronouns. Person, number, gender, and case must be correctly used in a sentence in order for a pronoun to receive credit. T h e major factors in distinguishing between personal pronoun scoring levels are person and number, the concept of person developing first and that of number developing later. Some items from the indefinite pronoun category may be used as personal pronouns as well as indefinite pronouns, but for structure and consistency in scoring, they are scored as indefinite pronouns. For example, lo and la are commonly used as personal pronouns in the- form of direct and indirect objects. These pronouns occur more frequently as indefinite pronouns and are therefore retained in that category for simplicity. As indefinite pronouns, lo and Ia receive the same number of points as if they were scored as personal pronouns, and the total score is not affected. T h e personal pronoun dl is often confused by beginning clinicians with the article el as in El nifio corre. T h e article form of the word is not scored. In Spanish, reflexive pronouns are among the earliest and most frequently used pronouns in child language, and



they are assigned a score of one. T h e pronouns se, me, and te can be either reflexive pronouns or indirect objects, and the clinician must distinguish between the use of the same words for these two structures in scoring because they receive different values. If se, me, or te in a sentence is a recipient of the action described by the verb, it is an indirect object, as in the sentences Se lo di6 and Me gusta. A reflexive pronoun is one which is part of the verb action and is directed toward the subject of the sentence as in Se rue El and Se bail6 ella. Relative pronouns which are probably the last to develop in a child's language are included in the last scoring level. Que and cual may act as indefinite pronouns but are included only in this category for simplicity. Primary Verbs. Conjugation of verbs in Spanish, as in any language, is a complex process. In determining verb hierarchies for scoring in the DASG procedure, a Spanish verb schema similar to Chomsky's schema for auxiliary verbs in English was used (Wolfe, 1966). T h e following schema accounts for the privilege of occurrence of auxiliary verbs in Spanish: P N + T -t- (poder + r [ deber -t- r)(haber -k- do)(estar -b ndo) V T h e first item, PN, represents person-number, which plays a very significant role in verb conjugations in Spanish. T h e number and person of a noun partly determine the verb-stem ending of the conjugated verb. For example, first, second, and third person singular pronouns for the verb comer in the present indicative tense require the following verb forms: como, comes, and come, while the plural pronouns in the same tense and person require: comemos, comdis, and comen, respectively. This function in Spanish is mandatory. T h e T in the schema refers to time, mood, and aspect which are obligatorily marked in the verb-stem ending in Spanish. T represents the following eight conjugations in Spanish: present, present subjunctive, preterit, imperfect, imperfect subjunctive, future, future subjunctive, and conditional. There are three obligatory factors, then (person, number, and time) which determine verb-stem endings. For example, conjugation of the verb tomar, into tomaste indicates second person, singularity, and past tense. Tomdbamos indicates first person, plurality, and imperfect past tense. There are two modal auxiliary verbs in Spanish, poder and deber, which are represented in the first bracketed (optional) category of the schema. T h e representation of these verbs (poder -}- r ] deber + r) signifies that when either one or the other is used, the addition of r, or the infinitive form of a verb, onto the following verb is obligatory, whether it is another auxiliary verb or the final verb. T h e slash signifies that either one or the other may be used. Sentences such as Yo puedo venir and El debe pagar can be accounted for thus far by following the verb formula. T h e auxiliary in the second bracketed category deals with haber (haber + do). This verb, too, is optional, and its use is simultaneously accompanied by the addition of -do, or the past participle form of a verb, onto the next verb. This allows such sentences as Yo podrla haber venido and Yo he venido.


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Estar is the last auxiliary verb, which is also optional, and is represented in the formula as (estar + ndo). T h e use of this auxiliary necessitates the addition of -ndo, or the present participle form, onto the main verb. W i t h this addition sentences such as Yo podria haber estado viniendo, Yo he estado viniendo, and Yo estoy viniendo, can be generated. In Spanish there are two copular verbs, ser and estar. T h e y are not interchangeable, and each has its distinct use. Estar, unlike ser, is used both as an auxiliary and copular verb and should not be confused in verb analysis. El estd aqui is an example of the copular use of estar, while El estd corriendo contains the auxiliary form. T h e V in the schema represents verb stems and verb-stem markers. Verb stems are the lexical part of the verb as in tom for tornar, corn for corner, and saI for salir. T h e r e are three verb-stem markers (infinitive endings) in Spanish which are used in classifying verbs as ar, er, and ir verbs. This analysis of Spanish verbs accounts for the majority of verb constructions in the language and serves the purpose of the DASG procedure well. T h e schema does not account for strings of infinitives which are often used in speaking, but infinitives other than those in the schema are analyzed as "secondary verbs" in the DASG. T h e breakdown of verb combinations presented in the schema is employed in presenting the grammatical hierarchy for primary verbs. T h e schema must be understood in order for a clinician to effectively score a speech sample. Most of the lower scores for primary verbs are assigned according to use of verb tenses, and the optional auxiliary verbs in the schema are accounted for as the hierarchy progresses above the scoring level of five. A score of one is given to present tense singular conjugations for first, second, and third persons. Also included as scoring one point is the use of the copular words es, estd, soy, estoy, and estds, which are developed at an early age in children in a Spanish-speaking environment. A score of one is also given to the early appearing estar + V + ndo, or present progressive construction, but only when used in the present tense and in the singular form. Other conjugations of the verb estar appear later in the developmental sequence and receive points according to the verb tense used. For example, the sentence Estd comiendo receives one point because of its simple construction, Estdn comiendo receives two points for plurality, and Estaban comiendo receives three points for use of the imperfect past form. Any plural, preterit tense, or imperative (command) verb construction receives a score of two. Use of copulas other than those listed in level one receive a score of three, along with the use of the imperfect past tense and use of the subjunctive mood. At the score of five the structures of poder and deber, followed by an infinitive, enter the hierarchy. It is a common mistake for a clinician to confuse auxiliary constructions like puede dorrnir and debe salir with constructions like quiere comer and to assign a score of one to puede or debe and a score of two under secondary verbs for use of the infinitives which follow. Poder and deber are modal auxiliary verbs and should be scored as units when used in combination with other verbs. Also receiving a score of five is the use of the conditional and future tenses. Verb constructions in sentences



such as El ha salido and Nunca Io habla visto receive a score of six and are represented in the verb ~ormula as haber+ V + do. T h e remainder of the verb hierarchy contains more complex verb constructions taken from the schema and is self-explanatory. In scoring correct use of verbs, care must be taken to discrirn]nate between articulation errors and misconjugations of verbs. Common phoneme substitutions made by Spanish-speaking children are /1/ for /r[ so that quiero becomes "quielo" a n d / t / f o r / t J ' / so that chocan becomes "'tocan." Errors due to poor articulation are scored as correct, while misconjugations such as "'teno" for tengo and "'sabo" for se receive no score. A special problem arises with the common errors "quero" for quiero, "tene" for tiene, and "vene" for viene which are all irregular verbs. Besides the fact that these differences are difficult to hear, unresolved arguments may be given that they are due to misarticulation of the diphthong or to generalizations of verb conjugation rules for regular verbs. Because of these uncertainties, these specific words are scored as correct in the DASG if all other parts of the verb are correctly used in the sentence. Secondary Verbs. When two kernel sentences are combined by making the second verb an infinitive, present participle, or gerund, a secondary verb is formed. The most frequent secondary verbs in children's Spanish are infinitival complements; that is, those infinitives which complete a secondary thought of the primary verb. These infinitives for the most part follow the verbs ir (Va a dormir), and quierer (Quiero caminar), but also commonly follow the verbs saber (El sabe mane]ar), de]ar (De]ale salir), and gustar (Me gusta comer). Another common infinitival complement occurs after tener in the form of Tiene que correr in which tiene que is viewed as a verb unit. All of the above infinitives receive two points. There is an obligatory a required before an infinitive when it follows the primary verb it: for example in Voy a salir, Va a caminar. If this obligatory a is deleted in these constructions, no sco e is given to the secondary verb, but the primary verb is given credit if used correctly in the sentence. For example, in Voy salir, Voy is given one point under primary verbs and salir (lacking the a) is not scored. In running speech it is difficult to h e a r the obligatory a before the infinitive when the conjugated form of ir ends with the ]a] phoneme, as in va and vaya. T h e same problem exists when the infinitive itself begins with the phoneme /a/ (ayudar, hacer). In these cases the infinitive following the primary verb is always given credit. For example, if Va a salir in rapid speech sounds like Va salir, both the primary verb ir and the infinitive salir are scored. Present participles are used quite frequently in Spanish and are given a score of three if they occur after any verb other than estar, as in Va llorando, Anda buscando. Noncomplementing infinitives of purpose, which receive a score of four, are those which are attached to existing complete sentences and are preceded by a preposition. For example, in Se pararon (a jugar) and Se pusieron los abrigos (para salir), the infinitives describe some additional purpose of the action of the primary sentence. Also receiving a score of four are infinitives occurring after interrogative words. Passive complements and ger-


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unds are the most complex secondary verbs in Spanish and receive scores of seven and eight, respectively. C o n j u n c t i o n s . A set of explicit instructions for scoring conjunctions, which was adapted from the Developmental Sentence Scoring procedure, is used for scoring conjunctions in the DASG. T h e major purpose of the following rules is to avoid long strings of sentences connected by conjunctions. 1. Sentences which begin with conjunctions are counted as complete sentences, but the conjunctions are not scored: a. (y) Maria va a comer. b. (pero) Juan no quiere jugar. c. (pot que) yo tengo uno.

2. Only one y conjunction per sentence is allowed when it connects two independent clauses. Sentences are broken up as follows: a. Yo tengo un perro y mi hermano tiene un gato . . . b. (y) a mi mamd no le gustan y dice que no los quiere en la casa.

3. When y is used in a series or compound subject or predicate, it is always counted and does not require the sentence to be broken up: a. ,4 mi me gustan galletas y dulces y tortillas y helado. b. Maria y Juan y Jos~ y yo estdbamos corriendo.

4. Internal conjunctions other than y do not require the sentence to be broken up: El querla salir pero estaba lloviendo y no ten[a abrigo porque se lo hab[a olvidado.

5. The above treatment is given to any overused conjunction: a. (entonces) el perro lo comi6 entonces el nifio se enoj6 . . . b. (entonces) el papd le di6 otro al niho entonces estaba lel[z.

Scores for conjunctions begin at Level 4, which contains the most frequent and earliest conjunctions used by children (y and que), and proceed to Level 8, which contains the most complex conjunctions of Spanish. Conjunctions receive high initial scores because they indicate that children are compounding grammatical units, a major developmental process in language acquisition. Increased use of conjunctions demonstrates that a child's utterances are becoming longer, and assigning high scores to these structures increases the effectiveness of the scoring system by maximizing scoring differences between successive age-groups. I n t e r r o g a t i v e Words. Interrogative words are scored when used in a question and are simply given their respective points when they occur. Care must be taken to distinguish between use of interrogative words and conjunctions, because many of the words are the same and differ only in usage. D o n d e would be scored as an interrogative word in g D 6 n d e v a n ellos? and as a conjunction in E l nifio j u e g a d o n d e los otros. Computing the Average Score (AS) When all of the sentences have been scored, sentence are added together and divided by 50 in the corpus if less than 50. This provides a referred to as the Average Score (AS). This

the individual scores for each or by the number of sentences mean sentence score which is score, when compared to the



DASG norms, can be used as an estimate of a child's overall grammatical proficiency in spontaneous speech. T h e AS can be used for comparison of the child's grammatical performance to the grammatical performance of other children the same age or to the child's own performance in language therapy over a period of time. The AS may indicate that language intervention is necessary for a child, but it does not give information about the procedures that should be followed in language teaching. It therefore becomes necessary to analyze the child's grammatical errors carefully within the corpus of 50 sentences, and within the group of utterances omitted from scoring, in order to recommend specific teaching goals in remediation. A sample score sheet which demonstrates the scoring procedures of the DASG is presented in Table 1. T h e sentences are not from a single child, but they represent a range of sentences commonly encountered in children's Spanish. A single child would not produce such a range of simple to complex sentences. An AS of 7.42 has been computed to demonstrate the computation procedure. TABLE 1. F i f t y s a m p l e s e n t e n c e s s c o r e d w i t h (371 + 50 = 7 . 4 2 ) .

Sentences 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Vengo. Estfi c o m i e n d o . Se cay6. E l l a se bafia. Mira! E l l o s est~in a v e n t a n d o la p e l o t a . Esta no me gustaba. /,Qu6 es esto? E s t e p e r r o va a c o m e r algo. E s t e y este v a n a q u l . Quiero que me traiga agua. (Que) venga a comer. Dijo que yo mirara p o r q u e alll e s t a b a el avi6n. EstAn b u s c a n d o el z a p a t o y n o 1o p u e d e n e n c o n t r a r . E1 a n d a b u s c a n d o su hermanito. E l n o se a c u e r d a d o n d e la p u s o . Mi m a m f i h a b i a salido. U d s . n o q u i s i e r o n dArselo. Yo n o s6 q u i e n les di6 esto. ~ Q u i 6 n nos v a a llevar? No quiero nada. N o p o d r i a salir. Mi m a m f i n o s a b e m a n e j a r . T e n e m o s tres p e r r o s e n n u e s t r a casa. C a d a nifio t e n l a j u g u e t e s .

t h e D A S G i n w h i c h t o t a l s c o r e is 371 a n d

Inde[. Personal Primary Pronouns Pronouns Verbs

2 2 2, 4 2, 2

3

3 3 2 3

Secondary ConjuncVerbs tions

AS is 7.42

Interrogative Words Total

-

1

-

-

-

-

1

-

-

-

1 1

1

2

-

-

-

$

3,1

1

-

-

-

5

-

2

-

-

-

2

4 3

2 3

-

-

-

6 8

-

1

-

-

1

4

-

I

2

-

-

9

-

2

-

4

-

10 11

3

1,3

-

4

-

-

3

4

-

-

7

2

2,3,3

-

4,5

-

19

-

2,

-

4

-

14

3,2

1

3

-

-

9

3,1 2 4, 3

1,2 6 2

2

6 -

-

16 8 14

2,7,5 5

1,2 1

2

-

1

19 9

3

-

1

-

-

-

4

-

5

-

-

-

5

-

2

I

2

-

-

5

4 5

4

2

-

-

-

10

-

3

-

-

-

8


162 TABLE


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150-171 1976

1. ( C o n t i n u e d )

Inde[. Pronouns

Sentences

Primary Verbs

Secondary Verbs

Conjunctions

Interrogative W o r d s

Total

26.

Los juguetes

-

4

2

-

-

-

6

27.

6Es tuyo?

-

2

I

-

-

-

S

28.

~C6mo

te va?

-

3

1

-

-

2

6

29.

Saldria

61 s i t u v i e r a

30.

una sombrilla. Mafiana estar~i en M6xico.

-

3 -

5, 3 5

-

7 -

-

18 3

-

2 -

3, 5 1

2 $

5 -

-

17 4 12

31.

El maestro

son tuyos.

Personal Pronouns

iba a escribir

pero no podia

encon-

32.

trar su l~piz. E1 nifio va iiorando.

33.

Cuando

yo sea grande,

me voy a la escuela.

-

2, 1

3, 1

-

5

-

34.

~Cu~l

-

-

I

-

-

4

5

35, 36.

Y o t e n g o d o s n o mdts. ~,De q u i 6 n e s l a o r t a

4, 3

2

1

-

-

-

10

libro quieres?

mufieca?

3

-

l

-

-

3

7

37. 38.

Se pararon a jugar. El debe haber estado

-

1

2

4

-

-

7

corriendo. La nifia ha estado

-

3

8

-

-

-

11

39.

durmiendo.

-

-

7

-

-

-

7

7 -

-

3

-

-

-

I0

1

0

-

-

1

-

1

2, 0

-

4

-

7

4

1

0

-

-

-

5

-

2

0

-

-

-

2

-

3, 3

2, 0

-

5

-

1$

-

-

1, 0

-

4

-

5

-

-

0

-

-

-

0

-

-

0

-

-

-

0

0

-

1

2

-

-

$

0

-

0

-

-

-

0

40.

Varios

nifios estaban

"41.

jugando. Voy cantar.

**42.

E1 nifio vi6 el perro y se

(lacking

a)

asusta. 043.

( tense agreement) La nifia se los poni6.

*44.

Yo no sabo.

( conjugation

045.

*46.

)

(conjugation) Ella corri6 para le pega. (no subjunctive

que no

conjugation ) Quiere ue compra dulces. ( no subjunctive conjugation)

*47.

Es lloviendo.

(set for

estar ) *48.

Cay6

(no reflexive)

*49.

Esta perro ( gender

*~50.

va a correr.

agreement)

Estos va aqul. ( number

agreement) ii

*Contains

grammatical

error.

STANDARDIZATION

OF THE

DASG

Norms

T h e DASG was standardized on 128 children, 64 of Mexican and 64 of Puerto Rican descent, between the ages of three years and six years 11 months. For each ethnic group there were 16 subjects, eight male and eight female, in each year age-group. All children met the following criteria:



1. All had normal hearing. 2. All were judged as having normal intelligence by their teachers and from use of the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale (Burgemeister, Blum, and Lorge, 1959) a nonverbal intelligence test. 3. Spanish was spoken at home at least 75% of the time by both parents and by the children. 4. All had been in the United States for a minimum of two years. 5. All resided in inner-city neighborhoods in Chicago. T h e subjects were obtained at r a n d o m from the Chicago public schools and various bilingual day-care centers in Chicago. T h e examiners were three Mexican-Americans, three Puerto Ricans, and one Venezuelan. W i t h the exception of the Venezuelan examiner, all testers were from the same neighborhoods and ethnic groups as the children they tested. T h e norms for the Mexican-American and Puerto Rican children are presented in T a b l e 2. T h e r e TABLE 2. Percentiles for 64 Mexican-American and 64 Puerto Rican children between the ages of 3.0 and 6.11

years. Ages

10

25

50

75

90

Mexican-American 3.0 to 3.11 4.0 to 4.11 5.0 to 5.11 6.0 to 6.11

2.96 4.15 4.77 5.53

3.57 4.82 5.68 6.53

4.24 5.56 6.69 7.64

4.91 6.30 7.70 8.75

5.52 6.97 8.61 9.76

Puerto Rican 3.0 to 3.11 4.0 to 4.11 5.0 to 5.11 6.0 to 6.11

3.02 4A9 4.62 5.56

3.63 5.10 5.33 6.72

4.30 5.77 6.34 8.00

4.97 6.44 7.35 9.28

5.58 7.05 8.26 10.44

were no significant differences in performance between the two ethnic groups at any age, so that a combination of the two groups for a total n o r m is possible. Norms for the total group of 128 children are presented in Figure 1, which shows the progression of average scores by one-year age-groups. T h e chart is helpful in evaluating a child's performance in relation to his age-groups and to adjacent age-groups.

Reliability and Validity In order to test within-subject internal consistency of the DASG, split-half reliability using odd and even sentences was computed and the SpearmanBrown prophecy formula used to estimate reliability coefficients. T h e correlation coefficients were computed for the average score and for scores of the six grammatical categories, which were obtained by adding the individual scores within each category. T h e split-half coefficients for the AS were 0.86 for the


164


XLI

11 10

.

9 .*"

9

111 10

...."~

co8

9- "

ld

n- 7 0 (3 co 6

9 ."

150-171 1976

9

I -"

a

~

Ld 5

rr 4 W

w s

--4

9

-3 2

-2 2~th and 7Sth Percentiles

1 0

lOth and 90th Percentiles

3.0 t o 3.11

1

4.0 t o 4.11

AGE

I

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

513 to 5.11

6.O t ~ 6.11

GROUPS

Figure I. Percentiles for average scores of 128 Mexlcan.American and Puerto Rican children.

Mexican-American children and 0.87 for the Puerto Rican children and represent the overall estimates of reliability for the DASG. Reliability coefficients for the grammatical categories, all of which were significant beyond the 0.01 level of confidence, are reported in Table 3. TARLE 3. Split-half reliability coefficients of grammatical categories for 64 Mexican-American and 64 Puerto Rican children.

Category Indefinite pronouns Personal pronouns Primary verbs Secondary verbs Conjunctions Interrogative words

Mexican-American 0.60 0.81 0.84 0.66 0.78 0.55

Puerto Rican 0.45 0.53 0.75 0.63 0.80 0.53

Sixteen subjects from each ethnic group, four from each age level, were tested twice to obtain measures of test-retest reliability 9 T h e two speech samples were obtained on different days within an eight-day period, and the second sample was elicited by the same examiner who had obtained the first sample. The test-retest reliability coefficients were computed for the average



score and each grammatical category using Spearman's rank-order correlation procedure for matched groups. T h e reliability coefficients for the total procedure, as measured by the Average Score, were 0.93 for the Mexican-American group and 0.92 for the Puerto Rican group, indicating that the procedure was stable over a limited time. Test-retest coefficients for the grammatical categories were significant beyond the 0.05 level of confidence, with the exception of indefinite pronouns for the Puerto Rican group. These coefficients are presented in T a b l e 4. Test-retest reliability coefficients of grammatical categories for 16 Mexican-American and 16 Puerto Rican children. TABLE 4.

Category Indefinite pronouns Personal pronouns Primary verbs Secondary verbs Conj unctions Interrogative words

Mexican-AmericanPuertoRican 0.32* 0.60 0.73 0.51 0.72 0.56

0.82 0.71 0.70 0.76 0.79 0.77

*Not significant. Some support for the validity of the DASG is supplied by the significant reliability coefficients obtained for the procedure. A measurement cannot be valid if it is not reliable, making internal consistency a prerequisite to validity. A measurement, on the other hand, may be reliable and not valid, as with a clock that consistently tells the wrong time. T h e fact that scores for the DASG increase with advancing age is an indication that language development is being measured effectively and attests to the instrument's validity. T h i s fact along with the indications that the DASG is a reliable procedure allows use of the total score, in this case the average score, as a criterion for testing the internal consistency of the instrument. Pearson product-moment correlations were computed between scores from each grammatical category and the average score to obtain category-total correlations. T h e AS is viewed as an overall measure of increasing grammatical development. It is assumed that individual grammatical categories which are positively correlated with this score are also measuring increases in language growth and are contributing to the total score. These correlations are presented in T a b l e 5. T h e only correlation which was not significant beyond the 0.01 level of confidence occurred with the category of interrogative words, indicating that as the AS increased, scores for interrogative words did not increase or decrease significantly. Validity may also be assessed by correlating test scores with some external criteria, in many cases other tests p u r p o r t i n g to measure the same behavior. T h e Screening Test of Spanish Grammar (STSG) (Toronto, 1973), which was


166


XLI

150-171 1976

TABLE 5. Category-total correlations for 64 Mexican-American and 64 Puerto Rican children. Category Indefinite pronouns Personal pronouns Primary verbs Secondary verbs Conjunctions Interrogative words

Mexican-American

Puerto Rican

0.49 0.74 0.78 0.60 0.90 0.18"

0.26 0.76 0.83 0.50 0.85 --0.05 ~

*Not significant.

standardized at the same time and with the same children as the DASG, was used for this purpose. The STSG is used for screening Spanish-speaking children with possible language deficiencies. It consists of a receptive and an expressive subtest which are designed to test comprehension and production of increasingly complex grammatical structures. Scores for both the STSG and the DASG were obtained for 105 children from the standardization sample and Pearson product-moment correlations were computed. These correlations are presented in Table 6 and were all significant beyond the 0.01 level of confidence. TABLE 6. Correlation coefficients for DASG and STSG scores for 55 Mexican-American and 50 Puerto Rican children. STSG Subtest Receptive Expressive

Mexican-American

Puerto Rican

0.55 0.64

0.63 0.64

Group Comparisons Children from the standardization sample were grouped by age, sex, tester, and ethnic group for analysis of scoring differences. Multivariate analyses of variance were completed for all groups using the AS and scores for individual grammatical categories. The children in the standardization sample were divided into four oneyear age-groups in order to assess the progression of scores as age increased. Analyses of variance were completed to determine overall significant differences between the age-groups. The means, standard deviations, and F ratios obtained from these computations are presented in Table 7. The analysis of variance throughout the age range of the DASG revealed a significant difference beyond the 0.001 level of confidence for the AS. All individual categories except interrogative words also showed significant overall differences between age-groups. For the ages used in this procedure, the category of interrogative words was not effective in measuring linguistic development.



TABLE 7. Means, standard deviations and F ratios* from analyses of variance using average scores and individual category scores across four one-year age-groups.

Score

Average score

Mexican-A merican Age Level Standard Overall (years) Mean Deviation F

3 4

4.25 5.56

1~0 1.10

5

6.69

6

7.64

Indefinite pronouns

3 4 5 6

49.06 52.81 63.94 63.31

15.64 12.68 18.21 20.09

Personal pronouns

3 4 6

58.94 74.56 88.00 104.12

Primary verbs

3 4 5 6

Secondary verbs

Overall F

3 4

4.31 5.77

0.99 1.00

1.51

5

6.34

1.42

1.65

6

8.00

1.90

3.16

3 4 5 6

44.43 48.94 57.25 57.13

12.34 14.88 14.94 15.13

3.11

18.58 29.21 20.81 43.17

6.78

3 4 5 6

67.68 86.81 84.68 112.75

21.07 27.04 33.61 38.43

5.85

75.50 91.56 100.88 112.50

17.03 13.09 14.90 19.78

14.55

3 4 5 6

76.13 93.68 97.25 112.00

9.93 13.62 16.95 17.46

15.87

3 4 5 6

14.94 21.63 26.75 33.75

7.70 8.56 12.69 14.84

7.89

3 4 5 6

17.18 19.00 22.25 31.31

10.71 10.39 13.13 15.27

4.01

Conjunctions

3 4 5 6

13.31 33.00 44.81 68.18

9.56 21.25 21.64 24.11

15.71

3 4 5 6

19.68 39.68 51.56 85.75

11.05 17.57 18.31 28.21

31.45

Interrogative words

3 4 5 6

4.06 2.56 3.06 2.81

5.22 3.41 4.47 3.08

3 4 5 6

1.50 1.75 3.00 1.00

1.55 3.06 2.73 1.41

2.17t

5

23.73

Puerto Rican Age Level Standard (years) Mean Deviation

0.40"}"

30.50

*dI = 3, 60. tNot significant.

I t was f o u n d t h a t e a c h o n e - y e a r a g e - g r o u p was s i g n i f i c a n t l y d i f f e r e n t f r o m its a d j a c e n t a g e - g r o u p w h e n u s i n g t h e AS i n a n a n a l y s i s of v a r i a n c e . T h i s ind i c a t e s t h a t t h e D A S G c a n d i s c r i m i n a t e b e t w e e n o n e - y e a r age levels a n d c a n b e u s e d i n r a n k i n g c h i l d r e n a c c o r d i n g to s y n t a c t i c d e v e l o p m e n t . I t c a n also be u s e d to e s t i m a t e t h e age level of a c h i l d ' s s y n t a c t i c p e r f o r m a n c e . A n a l y s e s of v a r i a n c e r e v e a l e d t h a t n o s i g n i f i c a n t differences i n s c o r i n g w e r e p r o d u c e d b e t w e e n c h i l d r e n tested b y d i f f e r e n t e x a m i n e r s . T h i s lack of signific a n t differences is a n i n d i c a t i o n t h a t c h i l d r e n d o n o t s i g n i f i c a n t l y v a r y i n p e r f o r m a n c e of s p o n t a n e o u s s p e e c h w i t h d i f f e r e n t testers w h o h a v e t h e same t r a i n i n g . O n e tester, t h o u g h she s p o k e S p a n i s h p r o f i c i e n t l y , was n o t of t h e s a m e b a c k g r o u n d as t h e c h i l d r e n , a n d n o s i g n i f i c a n t s c o r i n g differences w e r e


168


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1976

found between the children she tested and those tested by the other examiners. There were no significant differences in performance on the DASG between male and female children. This supports the same findings of earlier studies of Spanish language acquisition (Toronto, 1972; Kernan and Blount, 1966). It is interesting to compare these results to the findings of Koenigsknecht (1974), who found that middle-class, white, English-speaking male and female children produced significantly different scores on a similar language measure to the DASG. T h e only significant difference between scores obtained by Mexican-American and Puerto Rican children was for the category of interrogative words. Mexican-American children used more interrogative words than the Puerto Rican children, meaning that they asked more questions. Interrogative words, however, added virtually nothing to the discriminating ability of the DASG between age-groups, and this significant difference between ethnic groups does not affect the procedure as a whole. There were no other significant differences between the ethnic groups, supporting the author's hypothesis that grammatical development is stable among all Spanish-speaking cultures.

Limitations of the DASG T h e DASG takes considerable time to complete, and a clinician or teacher must have a thorough knowledge of Spanish grammar to score a speech sample successfully. In addition, only the Spanish of Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans from Chicago was used for standardization. This creates the possibility that Spanish-speaking children from different geographical and dialectal areas may respond differently to the procedure. T h e DASG is limited by its exclusion of many important Spanish grammatical features. Only six grammatical categories are accounted for in this procedure; the others must be analyzed descriptively. T h e DASG provides a long-needed device which indicates deviant syntactic development in Spanishspeaking children and provides a hypothetical model for sequences of learning syntactic items. Specific syntactic errors, however, must still be evaluated by descriptive analysis. T h e DASG scores only grammatically correct items, ignoring errors, and thus the scores are useful only as a comparison to the norms and not as an indication of remedial procedures.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to thank Laura Lee for her invaluable personal consultation and interest in the development of the DASG. T h e efforts of Roy A. Koenigsknecht and H. Ned Seelye in obtaining funds for the project are appreciated. T h e Chicago Public School System furnished many of the subjects for testing and partially funded the standardization. T h e standardization of the DASG was supported primarily by the Bilingual Education Section of the Illinois Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Requests for reprints should be addressed to the author, Department of Special Education, Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas 78666.



REFERENCES BERKO, J., The child's learning of English morphology. Word, 14, 150-177 (1958). BURGV.MEISTER,B., BLUM, L. H., and LORCV.,I., Columbia Mental Maturity Scale. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World (1953, rev. ed., 1959). GONZALEZ, G., The acquisition of Spanish grammar by native Spanish speakers. Doctoral dissertation, Univ. of Texas at Austin (1970). KWRNAN,T. K., and BLOUNT, B. G., The acquisition of Spanish grammar by Mexican children. Anthrop. Linguis., 8:9, 1-14 (1966). KOENIGSKNECHT, R. A., and LEE, L. L., Validity and reliability of developmental sentence scoring. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech and Hearing Association, Chicago (1971). KOENIGSKNECHT, ]~.. A., Statistical information on developmental sentence analysis. In L. L. Lee (Ed.), Developmental Sentence Analysis. Evanston, Ill,: Northwestern Univ. Press, 222268 (1974), LEE, L. L., and CANTER,S., Developmental sentence scoring: A clinical procedure for estimating syntactic development in children's spontaneous speech, ]. Speech Hearing Dis., 36, 315-340 (1971). TORONTO, A. S., A developmental Spanish language analysis procedure for Spanish-speaklng children. Doctoral dissertation, Northwestern Univ. (1972). TORONTO, A. S., Screening Test o] Spanish Grammar. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press (1973). WOLFE, D. L., A generative-transformational analysis of Spanish verb forms. Doctoral dissertation, Univ. of Michigan (1966). Received April 9, 1975. Accepted July 23, 1975.


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150-171 1976

APPENDIX SYNTACTIC

HIERARCHIES

DEVELOPMENTAL

Score

AND

SCORING

ASSESSMENT

Indefinite Pronouns and Noun Modifiers

1

SYSTEM FOR THE

OF SPANISH

Personal Pronouns reflexives: se, me, te

GRAMMAR

Primary Verbs single present tense: vengo, vienes, viene. copular es, son, est/~, soy, estoy, est~is Estar + V + n d o with present tense only: Est~ jugando.

2

este, esta, esto, ese, esa, eso la, lo, m~s, todo, toda, otro, otra, nada, primero

4

5

1st and 2nd person singular: yo, t6, Ud., mi, mlo, tuyo, suyo, su.

plural conjugations, preterit tense, imperatives-any form

3rd person: 61, ella, de

copula other than score I:

61, de ella, alguien, aquel

fu6, era, fui

singular direct object past perfect tense: -aba and indirect object: se, and -ia endings subjunctives me, te, le, ti also: conmigo, ccntigo

all plurals up to and in- plurals: nosotros, cluding this level: algo, nuestro, ellos, elias, Uds., alguno, alguna, poco, mucho, unos, uno, dos, tres . . .

mis, tus, sus, aquellos, tuyos, suyos, nadie

cualquier, ambos, cada, ning6n

plural direct object and indirect object: les, los,

poder or deber +

nos

podrla, estarla haber+

varios, 6nico, pr6ximo, 61timo, segundo, tercero, etc. plus female genders

relative pronouns: que, quien, cual

V + r

conditional tense:

haber + ndo

V+do estado +

V +

poder or deber + haber 4 estado + ndo passives



Score

Secondary Verbs

Conjunctions

I

Interrogative Words

qud quidn d6nde

2

Complementing tives:

infini-

cu~ndo para qud c6mo

ir q- infinitive Va a salir. Iba a venir. D~jale cantar. Me gusta caminar. T i e n e que ir.

Present participle:

por qu6 de qui~n de qud cu~mto(s)

Va llorando, Anda buscando,

Noncomplementing in- Y finitives of purpose: Se que

cu~il

pararon a jugar, para salir, de venir.

Also infinitive with interrogative word: S~ donde Jr. porque para que como

pero, cuando donde, entonces, mientras, hasta, antes, desde, despu~s, a6n, menos que

7

Passive complement of infinitive: Quiero estar vestido.

8

Gerund or infinitive used as subject: Fumar es malo. C a m i n a n d o le hace bien.

o

ni si por lo tanto, sin embargo, no obstante, sino, etc.


Improving language mapping in clinical fMRI through assessment of grammar.

Impaired stress awareness in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia.

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Letter: Developmental assessment.

Letter: Developmental assessment.

Genetic basis of grammar defect.

Kinetics: the grammar of enzymology.

Editorial: The Grammar of Multilingualism.

Letter: Universal periodic developmental assessment.

Phonology without universal grammar.

Developmental assessment is a necessity.

Letter: developmental screening and assessment.

The grammar of transcriptional regulation.

Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC): Spanish validation.

Aflatoxin levels and exposure assessment of Spanish infant cereals.

Assessment of Spanish Panel Reactive Antibody Calculator and Potential Usefulness.

OTITIS MEDIA VOCABULARY AND GRAMMAR.

Implicit learning and reading: insights from typical children and children with developmental dyslexia using the artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm.

The Spanish version of the Fatigue Assessment Scale: reliability and validity assessment in postpartum women.

Medication list assessment in Spanish hospital emergency departments.

How reliable is the Spanish bodily harm assessment scale?

Feature-blind grammar and dysphagia.

Characterization of Vulnerable and Resilient Spanish Adolescents in Their Developmental Contexts.

Flexible processing and the design of grammar.