Date of Award

1975

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.) in Speech: Emphasis in Speech Pathology/Audiology

Department

Speech Communication

Physical Description

1 online resource (87 p.)

Subjects

People with mental disabilities -- Language, English language -- Inflection

DOI

10.15760/etd.2255

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the development and use of certain grammatical morphemes, i.e., the English inflections for plural, possessive, present progressive and past tense in the speech of educable mentally retarded (EMR) adolescents. The performance on two grammatical tasks of EMR subjects was compared to that of normal control subjects matched by mental age scores. The first task was to produce, verbally, the required inflection for a novel (nonsense) word on a modified version of Berko’s Test of English Morphology (BTEM) (Berko, 1958). Secondly, subjects responded to grammatical contrasts in lexical or real words at levels of imitation, comprehension and production on a modified form of the Imitation, Comprehension and Production Test (ICP) (Fraser, Bellugi and Brown, 1963).

The results of this study revealed statistically significant poorer performance in the use of English inflections by EMR adolescents when compared with control subjects of similar mental age, specifically in the use of less common allomorphs for plural, possessive and past tense.

Description

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Speech Communication with Emphasis in Speech Pathology/Audiology

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/15232

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