Results

1
Morphological Intervention with African American
English Speaking Children Auxiliary BE Frances
Burns, Texas State University-San Marcos Stephen
M. Camarata, Vanderbilt University This research
was supported in part by NIH grant DC005994

• Results
• Participants 1-3 moved from zero overt tense
  marking to consistent use of auxiliary was and
  increased use of auxiliary is at the post
  phase.
• Targeting auxiliary are appeared to influence
  P1s and P3s use of the form.
• Conclusions
• Auxiliary was is an appropriate intervention
  target because it is never absent in
  typically-developing (TD) AAE speaking children.
• Auxiliary is/are are optional in AAE and
  should not be targeted until the linguistic
  constraints governing their optionality have been
  determined.
• Discussion
• Morphological treatment should be sensitive to a
  childs dialect and expected outcomes should
  mirror production rates of TD AAE speakers.
• Past tense ed, 3rd person s, auxiliary/copula
  BE forms, possessive s, and plural s are
  optional in AAE. This optionality complicates the
  decision of whether to provide intervention to
  children suspected of having underlying
  grammatical deficits. This study is a foundation
  for identifying parameters for including young
  AAE speakers in morphological treatment.
• Reference Leonard, L.B., Camarata, S.M.,
  Pawlowska, M., Brown, B., Camarata, M.N. (2006.
  Tense and agreement morphemes in speech of
  children with specific language impairment during
  intervention Phase 2. Journal of Speech,
  Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 749-770.

• Purpose
• To examine whether children who speak African
  American English (AAE) and have been diagnosed
  with specific language impairment (SLI), benefit
  from intervention using grammatical morphemes
  that mark tense and agreement.
• To identify appropriate morphological
  intervention targets for young AAE speakers with
  SLI.
• Research Question
• Do young AAE speakers with SLI benefit from
  intervention using grammatical morphemes that
  mark tense and agreement (auxiliary is/are/was)?
• Method
• 4 African American males ages 36-49 with SLI
  were disaggregated from a larger NIH grant (5R01
  DC005994-2 (Leonard)
• The absence of auxiliary/copula was was used as
  one of the indicators of morpho-syntactic
  impairment.
• Participants received morphological intervention
  using grammatical morphemes that mark tense and
  agreement (auxiliary is/are/was).
• Probe tasks were used to assess the participants
  use of auxiliary is/are/was at pre, mid, post
  and follow-up phases.
• Results
• All participants showed gains in the production
  of auxiliary is/was. However gains were much
  lower for participant 4 (P4), who demonstrated
  more impaired language skills.