Homework Three
Due at 12:00 Noon on November 18, 2010
For this assignment you will conduct a syntactic complexity analysis, or Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). For this
assignment you will segment bound morphemes and then calculate the mean length of each utterance in morphemes.
1.
Segment all bound morphemes using the conventions listed on the back of this handout. Only segment the
Child’s utterances. You will use a slash (/) to segment each bound morpheme. See the example below:
E So what did you do today?
C I play/ed with my car/s.
C (and) then I went swimming.
2.
The child’s first utterance contains 7 morphemes. Six morphemes are free morphemes (I, play, with, my & car)
and two morphemes are bound morphemes (ed & s). The second utterance contains four morphemes. Notice
the word “and” is not used as a conjunction. The word appears to be a filler and is therefore enclosed in
parentheses.
3.
Once you have segmented all bound morphemes, count the number of morphemes (both free and bound
morphemes) and the number of C-units in the sample. In the example above there are 7 morphemes in the first
C-unit and 5 morphemes in the second C-unit for a total of 12 morphemes. There are 2 C-units.
4.
Finally, calculate the MLU by dividing the number of C-units by number of morphemes. For the example above
this would be 12/2 or 6.0 average morphemes per utterance.
5.
In your sample CLEARLY indicate
a. Total number of C-units
b. Total number of morphemes
c. MLU
This assignment is worth Twenty-five points. One Point will be deducted for EACH of the following errors:
1.
2.
3.
Incorrect segment
Incorrect convention for segmenting
Missing any of the following; Total number of C-units, , total number of morphemes, MLU
You must email your transcribed file to me at Valdez1@nmsu.edu
Bound Morphemes Conventions
Grammatical morphemes have been a useful index for tracking growth and complexity of young children's language.
SALT uses bound morphemes to mark the use of plurals in both English and Spanish samples. SALT also uses
bound morphemes in English samples to mark possessives, verb inflections and contractions. The same is not true
for Spanish as possessives, verbs conjugations, and contractions operate under a distinct inflectional system that is
often not amenable to the attachment of bound morphemes. If you want SALT to make calculations in morphemes
as well as words and to provide a Bound Morpheme Table, you must separate each bound morpheme from the free
morpheme with a slash (/). Bound morphemes are recognized when they immediately follow a slash without blank
spaces. Words cannot begin with slashes. Thus, prefixes cannot be coded as morphemes. It is suggested that you
adopt the following conventions in order to group similar inflections, which take on different spellings.
English
Bound
Morpheme
/S
/Z
/S/Z
/ED
/3S
/ING
/N'T, /'T
/'LL, /'M, /'D
/'RE, /'S, /'VE
Meaning
Examples
Plural noun (-s, -es)
Possessive (-'s, -s)
Plural & possessive (-s')
Past tense (-ed,-d)
3rd person singular (-s, -es)
Present progressive inflections
Negative contraction (-n't, -'t)
Contractible verb forms
HOUSE/S, BABY/S, PANTS
DAD/Z, MARY/Z, OURS
BABY/S/Z, TEACHER/S/Z
LOVE/ED, DIE/ED
GO/3S, TELL/3S, DOES
GO/ING, RUN/ING
CAN/'T, DOES/N'T, WON'T
I/'LL, I/'M, I/'D,
WE/'RE, HE/'S, WE/'VE
Special Notes
Do not mark irregular verb forms or concatenatives as inflections (use DOES, GONNA, etc).
When the spelling of a free morpheme such as CRY changes with the addition of the bound morpheme, use the root
spelling of the free morpheme (as if the bound morpheme is not there). Then, simply add the slash plus the bound
morpheme (i.e. CRY/ED). If this is not done, the stem CRI will be treated as a different word from CRY and thereby
inflate Type-token ratio (TTR) as well as No. of Different Words.
Words that contain a bound morpheme in an adjectival form, which cannot be used in that context without the bound
morpheme, should be entered without a slash (i.e. scrambled egg, bowling pin, swimming pool.)
Do not mark predicate adjectives as inflections (use I AM TIRED; THEY LOOK BORED; THE DOOR IS
CLOSED; WE WENT SWIMMING).
Do not mark gerunds as inflections (use SWIMMING IS FUN).
Do not use the slash / symbol for WON'T, DON'T, AIN'T and LET'S. Because the sound of the root word is not the
same in the contracted form (except for "let's" which means "let us" rather than "let is"), children tend to learn these
words as whole units very early in their development.