Facilitating syntax acquisition for Cantonese-Speaking Preschool Children with DLD: A Treatment Proposal of Target Selection Considerations Based on the Can-LARSP

Introduction. Syntax deficits are common among Cantonese-speaking children with language difficulties, which require language intervention. One major challenge of language intervention concerns the appropriateness of target selection. According to a corpus study with longitudinal data, the Can-LARSP identified the five most common morphosyntactic structures to be subject-predicate, verb-object, modifier-head, serial-verb, and verb-complement, which accounted for over 80% of Cantonese-speaking preschool children’s sentence production. The Can-LARSP further proposed that the syntactic complexity of Cantonese can be understood as a multiple hierarchical organization, in which lower-level phrases are nested within higher-level phrases and/or clauses. Using this framework, at least two levels of treatment implication were identified. First, for children who failed to master any of the five most common morphosyntactic structures, introducing the missing structure(s) will be needed. Second, for children who demonstrated limited abilities of nesting lower-level phrases within higher-level ones, introducing the new forms that promote maximum generalization of nesting will be needed. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a statistical learning-based syntactic intervention that incorporates the Can-LARSP framework into treatment design to inform target selection that promotes better generalization.
Methods. In this proposed language intervention, the mastery of the five common structures in lower- and higher-order levels by the target children will be first analyzed to inform target selections in language input. Two Cantonese-speaking children (each suitable for one of the treatment levels described) with language difficulties will be recruited. Ten treatment sessions designed according to the corresponding treatment levels will be conducted starting from March 2023. Treatment effects will be measured in terms of pre- and post-treatment comparisons of the number of morphosyntactic structures and that of nested morphosyntactic structures.
Results & Discussion. Results, together with theoretical and clinical implications, will be presented at the conference.