A Transformational Analysis of Oral and Written Grammatical Structures in the Language of Children in Grades Three, Five, and Seven
- 1 September 1967
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in The Journal of Educational Research
- Vol. 61 (1) , 35-39
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.1967.10883574
Abstract
Speech and writing samples from 90 children (30 in each of graded 3, 5, and 7) were analyzed to identify differences In syntactic complexity of grammatical structures. Various constructions were compared for significant differences (.05 level) by mode of discourse, grade, and sex. Syntactic complexity, as reflected In length of minimal terminable syntactic unit and number of sentence-combining transformations per unit, was found to be greater in speech than in writing for grade 3 and greater in writing than speech for grades 5 and 7. These measures of complexity show significant increases with advance In grade but show no consistent pattern of significant differences by sex.Keywords
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: