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development. This research described children’s level of language development according to ameasure of utterance length - Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). A determination of MLU ismade by analyzing a 100 utterance language sample for the average length of child-producedutterances, in terms of morphemes. For example, the utterance 'Bobby hitting' has a morphemecount of 3, as 'hitting' includes both the verb 'to hit' and the present progressive morpheme -ing.This type of measure of language development, rather than age, is considered a better predictorof grammatical development, as children of similar chronological ages can vary greatly in theirlanguage acquisition. Therefore, researchers have attempted to determine in what order and atwhat stage of linguistic development different language forms should appear.Until recently, most research has focused on similarities in grammatical development, with theaccompanying perception that all normal children follow a relatively fixed and stable pattern ofgrammatical development. However, more recently, investigators have begun to question thisassumption, with research that indicates a greater variability than previously assumed (Lahey,Liebergott, Chesnick, Menyuk & Adams, 1982). Given the original research indicating veryconsistent patterns of grammatical acquisition among middle-class native-English speakers, thistrend was assumed to hold for non-dominant culture English speakers, as well as childrenacquiring languages other than English.A considerable amount of research on the grammatical development of native-Spanish speakershas been performed, with the goal of finding a consistent order of acquisition of morphemes suchas been found among middle class, native English speakers (e.g. González, 1978; Kvaal,Shipstead-Cox, Nevitt, Hodson & Launer, 1988; Olarte, 1985; Vivas, 1979). However, in a metaanalysisof these studies, Merino (1992) found that no more than very gross generalities could befound, such as the acquisition of the present tense before the subjective. These findings haveimportant implications for the language assessment of bilingual and non-English speakingchildren.These studies that indicate that the order and developmental age of appearance of morphemesmay not be as consistent as previously thought should warn educators and assessment personnelagainst making judgments about grammatical development for the purposes of determiningspecial education placement. We need to be very cautious when making comparisons ofindividual children against assumed benchmarks of “normal” development. These guidelines ofmorphological development should be seen as generalities and deviance from this observedprogression should not be taken as indications of a language problem.In addition to research focused on the stage and sequence of grammatical development,researchers have also looked at the process by which children acquire grammatical forms. Thisprocess was assumed to be a matter of modeling, imitation and reinforcement when Skinner’sbehavioral model of language development was in vogue. However, researchers have sinceobserved that children seem to go through a process of hypothesis testing. Children may acquirea form of a word, such as “went” without acquiring the rule for irregular past tenses. Later, whenthey acquire the rule for formation of regular past tenses, they may over generalize the rule,forming productions such as “goed”. As they fine tune their system of grammatical rules andacquire the irregular past tense, they will once again correctly produce “went”. During thisperiod of over-extensions, children may be very resistant to corrections of forms that they havenot yet acquired. Table 6-2 provides an example of a hypothetical, but typical mother-childinteraction that demonstrates children’s attention to the truthfulness, rather than the grammaticalcorrectness of the input. In fact, observations of mother-child dyads indicate that parents respond© 2008 Dr. Catherine CollierAll Rights Reserved88