Class Exercises
MLU and Morphology
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ed (past)
ex (out of, from)
mis (negative, wrong)
out (extra , beyond)
over (too much)
post(behind)
al (pertaining)
en (used to form verbs from
adjectives)
ism (doctrine, state)
ist (one who does something)
ity (used for abstract nouns)
lv (used to form adverbs)
ing (at present)
‘s (possession)
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bi (twice)
semi (half)
super (superior)
trans (across)
tri (three)
un (not)
under
de (reversal)
pre (before)
pro (in favor of)
re (again)
able (ability)
ize (action, policy)
less (without)
ly( used to form adverb)
s (plural)
• ness (quality)
• er, or (used as agentive
ending)
• ous ( full)
• y (inclined to)
• ance ( action, state)
• est (superlative)
• ful (full, tending)
• ible (likelihood)
• ish (belonging to)
• s (third person marker)
Prefixes
Suffixes
Derivational
Inflectional
Calculating MLU
Do’s and don’ts
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Exclude from your count
Imitations
Elliptical answers
Partial utterances
Unintelligible utterances
Rote passages
False starts and
Reformulations within
utterances
Noises
Discourse markers
Identical utterances
Counting or other sequences
of enumeration
Single words or phrases
Count as one morpheme
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Uninflected lexical morphemes
Contractions
Concatenatives
Inseparable linguistic units
Irregular past tense
Plurals which do not occur in
singular form
• Gerunds and participles that
are not part of the verb phrase
• Inflectional forms
• Contractions
• You need at least 50
utterances to calculate MLU
• 100 is recommended
Lund and Dunchan (1993)
Calculating MLU
• After you have counted all the
morphemes, you are ready to calculate
the MLU. The traditional method of
calculating MLU is dividing the number of
morphemes by the number of utterances.
For example:
150 morphemes / 50 utterances = 3.0 MLU
Sample 1
1) Calculate MLU
2) which of Brown’s developmental stages
has the child reached?
3) identify the morphemes used by the child
4) identify the semantic functions used by
the child
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*CHI: why dis got holes?
%act: looking at holes in Ursula's pad
*URS:so you can put it in a notebook # if you
like.
*CHI: 0.
%act: falls from bike
*URS:what happened?
*CHI: I fall # broke my head.
*URS:you didn't.
*CHI: tell me story.
*CHI: tell me story.
*URS:shall we look at these first?
%act: gives Adam bag of toys
*CHI: let's open it.
*CHI: what is it?
*URS:it's a watch.
*CHI: dat's a watch.
*CHI: fourteen clock.
*URS:what is it?
*CHI: fourteen o'clock.
*CHI: stop it.
*URS:what?
*CHI: stop it.
*CHI: turn back on.
*CHI: has wings.
*URS:where?
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*CHI: turn it.
*CHI: stop it.
*CHI: it's fourteen clock.
*CHI: enough clock.
*CHI: in go clock.
%act: putting watch away
*CHI: a tape recorder.
*CHI: where is a box?
%act: <aft> taking watch out again
*CHI: it's fourteen clock.
*CHI: it not fourteen clock # it nineteen # six #
how d(o) you know?
*CHI: it's not six # it number two.
*CHI: how d(o) you know it going eat supper?
%exp:presumably the watch
*CHI: how (a)bout eat supper?
*CHI: it's fourteen o'clock.
*CHI: well # well.
*CHI: it's fourteen cl(ock) # clock.
*CHI: achoo@o.
*CHI: le(t) me stop it.
*CHI: le(t) me turn on.
*CHI: xxx put in.
*CHI: put in.
%act: puts watch back in box
*CHI: it's go to sleep.
Stage
I
II
III
IV
V
Age ( years)
1-2:2
2:3-2:6
2:7-2:10
2:11-3:4
3:5-3:10
MLU
1:0-2:0
2:0-2:5
2:5-3:0
3:0-3.75
3:75-4:5
Semantic Roles
Two-word utterances
• Possessives
– daddy coffee
– Andrew shoe
• Property-indicators
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big balloon
little shell
all wet ball
all wet pants
dirty face
old cookie
• Recurrence / number /
disappearance
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more glass
two plane
all gone bee
window bye-bye
• Locatives
– ball daddy (TO)
– stick car (IN)
• Actor/Action
– mommy sit
– daddy work
– Andrew sleep
• Others
– eat dessert
– bounce ball
Semantic Relations in 1-word
stage
• POSSESSION
• IMPERATIVE
• NEGATIVE
• LOCATION
• RECURRENCE
• DISAPPEARANCE
“Daddy” (=slippers)
“open” = open the jar
“blow” = blow my nose
“no” = negate actions
“down” = getting
down from high chair
“more”
“allgone”