Extensão média do enunciado

: obtenção de valores padrão para o português europeu em crianças de 4 anos (4;00-4;05)

Abstract

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) is a spontaneous language sample analysis measure that has been used for many years and applied in a number of different studies in other languages. Through this measure, speech therapists and linguistics have been able to evaluate language disorders, plan their interventions, and study children’s language development in a specific language and in bilingual children. For the European Portuguese language, values haven’t been obtained to realise if this is a good measure to be used with Portuguese children. Therefore, a project was developed to study this measure in children between the ages of 4 and 5 and a half years old. This dissertation’s main goal is the obtainment of values of MLU in words (MLUw) from 4;00 to 4;05-year-old children. It is also intended to understand if theses values are influenced by the child’s gender or its parents’ educational level. 30 children, living and attending kindergartens in the area of great Lisbon participated in this study, all presenting typical language development. Their speech samples were recorded (a minimum of 100 utterances per child), transcripted and then analysed in terms of MLUw. Each child’s individual MLUw was calculated, followed by the obtainment of an average of the 30 samples collected and thus found the mean value of MLUw for this age group. No significant differences were observed in terms of the child’s gender and the parents’ education level doesn’t seem to influence the child’s MLUW.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Mineiro (Supervisor) & Maria Emília Santos (Supervisor)