CHILDES Clinical Dutch Bol/Kuiken Corpus: Down

Gerard Bol General Linguistics University of Groningen g.w.bol@rug.nl

Folkert Kuiken Dutch as Second Language University of Amsterdam f.kuiken@uva.nl

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Citation information

Bol, G. W. & Kuiken, F. (1990). Grammatical analysis of developmental language disorders: A study of the morphosyntax of children with specific language disorders, with hearing impairment and with Down’s syndrome, Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 4, 77–86.

An additional reference is:

Crystal, D., Fletcher, P., & Garman, M. (1976). The grammatical analysis of language disability. London: Edward Arnold.

In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by at least one of the above references.

Project Description

This corpus includes data from the children with Down Syndrome of the GRAMAT research, carried out by Gerard Bol and Folkert Kuiken between 1984 and 1988. The collecting of the data took place in 1984 and 1985. Digitizing the audio files is done by Julia Koekkoek (BA, University of Utrecht) in 2023, with a grant from prof.dr. Folkert Kuiken (University of Amsterdam) and prof.dr. Frank Wijnen (University of Utrecht). The exact connection between the utterance in the audio file and the transcript is not always accurate, because the linkage was done through an automatic process. In any case, the audio files are linked to the correct transcript. For six transcripts the audio files are missing due to the fact that the tapes have been lost.

The GRAMAT research aimed at two questions: 1) Is it possible to discern patterns in the morphosyntax of three groups of language-disordered children — children with SLI, with Down syndrome, and with hearing impairment, and 2) Can these patterns be related to the clinical characteristics of the children? Analysis of samples of spontaneous speech produced an affirmative answer to the first question. The answer to the second question is that the different clinical characteristics of the children did not lead so much to different kinds of language disorders as to differences in the degree of being language disordered. The three groups of children showed more commonalities than differences in producing morphosyntax.

Down Syndrome Participants

The 20 Dutch children with Down’s syndrome (10 male and 10 female) in this research ranged in age from 4;04.21 to 18;11.5. Their intelligence level determined with a Dutch adaptation of the Merrill-Palmer Preschool Performance Tests, differed from 20 to 56. Their mental age was at least 3;6 years. The names of the children in the corpus are pseudonyms. Participants are identified by first names and with a six-digit code, indicating the age of the child in years, months, and days. Further information about the children is given below.

The speech of the 20 children with Down’s syndrome was audiotaped at their school, while they were playing with their speech therapist in a free-play situation. One of the two investigators was present in the room of the speech therapist. From time to time the investigator participated in the conversation. From each child 100 analyzable utterances were transcribed by the investigator that had been present at the recording. After that the utterances were analyzed according to the GRAMAT framework. GRAMAT (Grammatical Analysis of Developmental Language Disorders) is a Dutch adaptation of the descriptive morphosyntacticframework used by Crystal, Fletcher and Garman (1976).

Bol Kuiken Down Syndrome Children

Nr.	Down Syndrome	Age	MLU-m	Sex
01	Anita	161001	3.3	F
02	Antoinette	130522	3.2	F
03	Bert	130817	2.4	M
04	Chantal	080407	2.8	F
05	Eline	150616	2.5	F
06	Erik	160717	1.8	M
07	Fiona	100503	3.4	F
08	Iris	150109	3.0	F
09	John	080127	2.0	M
10	Katrijn	181105	1.9	F
11	Lisa	180718	1.8	F
12	Marcel	040421	1.2	M
13	Marius	180502	3.3	M
14	Martijn	170109	4.7	M
15	Michael	180229	3.0	M
16	Pieter	150207	3.5	M
17	Ronnie	160316	5.2	M
18	Sanne	130002	3.0	F
19	Sven	100818	2.4	M
20	Tineke	080407	2.4	F

Acknowledgements