Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Syntactic Structure in the Written Language of Hearing Imparied Students.

The purpose of the present study was to apply to written language samples of hearing impaired students various quantitative and qualitative indices of grammatical complexity proposed by Hunt (1965). Hunt studied grammatical structures written at three grade levels by students with normal hearing, and found that the "minimal terminable syntactic unit", or T-Unit, wan a mote reliable measure of increasing syntactic complexity than commonly used measures such as the Subordination Ratio. He further found that increasing syntactic complexity, as measured by the T-Unit, was chiefly the result of growth in nominal structures, with some slight growth occurring in the ve:b auxiliary and in the main verb. Part I f he present investigation examined the T-Unit as a measure of syntactic complexity in the written language of hearing impaired students in comparison with various other measures of such complexity, While the T-Unit proved to be a useful measure of syntactic complexity, the Subordination Ratio appeared to be still ,lore useful and reliable for assessing complexity in the types of "garbled' language usually present in the written productions of children with se hearing impairments. Part II exomined the types of grammatical structures which were the chief contributors to increasing syntactic complexity in the written language samples. The most notewort.14 finding in this section of the atudy was that certain types of verbs and verbals possessed considerable sensitivity to growth across the entire nine year age span sampled, whereas other constructions tended 'o be sensitive at either the younger or the older ages alone. While these studies, which are only part of a larger research program, were not directly concerned with problems of teaching methods and curriculum, the investigators concluded that they had some contributions to make to objectivity of written language assessment which is often an essential of sound methodology.