Vietnamese children with and without DLD: Classifier use and grammaticality over time.
Giang Pham, Andrew Simpson, Khanh Nguyen
PMID 36587459WHAT IT FOUND
Vietnamese children with DLD used fewer classifiers and simpler structures than peers through second grade.
Classifier omission errors were inconsistent and not a reliable marker, but limited classifier variety and lack of complex three-element phrases persisted.
Key findings
01Children with DLD produced significantly fewer unique classifiers than typically developing peers, a gap that persisted from kindergarten through second grade.
02In kindergarten, only one child with DLD produced a three-element classifier structure, compared to eight of ten typically developing children.
03Classifier omission errors did not differ significantly between groups over time and were highly variable, suggesting they are not a reliable clinical marker for school-age children.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was very small (n=20), which limits the generalizability of the findings. Attrition occurred in the DLD group, with only seven children completing all three time points. The study focused on a specific dialect and region (Hanoi), which may not represent all Vietnamese speakers. Classifier diversity was constrained by the specific nouns present in the storybook, so it may not reflect a child's full classifier knowledge.
Declared interests
The study was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (N.I.H., Extramural). No other conflicts of interest were reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use classifier omission as a primary diagnostic marker for DLD in school-age Vietnamese children. The study found this error type was inconsistent between groups and decreased over time, making it unreliable compared to measures of classifier diversity and syntactic complexity.