title: Developmental Sentence Scoring for Japanese (DSSJ).
abstract: This paper reports on the development and use of the Developmental Sentence Scoring for Japanese (DSSJ), a new morpho-syntactical measure for Japanese constructed after the model of the English Developmental Sentence Scoring model (Lee, 1974). Using this measure, we calculated DSSJ scores for 84 children divided into six age groups between 2;8 and 5;2 on the basis of 100-sentence samples collected from free-play child-adult conversations. The analysis showed a high correlation of the DSSJ overall score with the Mean Length of Utterance. The analysis of the DSSJ subarea scores revealed large variations between these subarea scores for children with similar overall DSSJ scores. When investigating the high-scoring children (over 1SDover group average), most children scored high in three to five subareas, but the combination of scores for these subareas varied from child to child. It is concluded that DSSJ is a valuable tool especially for the language acquisition research. The overall DSSJ score reliably reflects the overall morpho-syntactic development of Japanese children, and the subarea scores provide specific information on individual acquisition patterns.
authors.affiliation: Aichi Shukutoku University.
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Miyata
authors.affiliation: Carnegie Mellon University.
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: MacWhinney
authors.affiliation: Tokyo Gakugei University.
authors.forename: Kiyoshi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Otomo
authors.affiliation: Chukyo University.
authors.forename: Hidetosi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sirai
authors.affiliation: McGill University.
authors.forename: Yuriko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Oshima-Takane
authors.affiliation: Bunkyo University.
authors.forename: Makiko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hirakawa
authors.affiliation: University of Pittsburgh.
authors.forename: Yasuhiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shirai
authors.affiliation: Nagoya University.
authors.forename: Masatoshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sugiura
authors.affiliation: Tokyo Future University.
authors.forename: Keiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Itoh
keywords: Developmental Sentence Scoring for Japanese; Mean Length of Utterance; language assessment; morpho-syntax