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Measurement of African American English (AAE) in young children is difficult to determine given the overlap of various AAE grammatical features (e.g., plural –S omission) with early developmental errors. This study examines AAE development with age for young African American children for syntactic versus morphological AAE features. We also look at AAE features in relation to developmental errors common in early childhood. To do this we calculate dialect density measure values (DDM) using narrative language samples from 113 African American children ranging in age from 32 to 76 months. We run a series of analyses to examine the relationship between age and AAE features. We examine features that are syntactic versus morphological in nature. We then analyze features that overlap with early developmental errors versus features that do not. Findings and implications will be discussed. Funding provided by the U. S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Early Reading First Program Grant S359B08008, NIH, NIGMS (Grant 1 U54GM104938), an IDeA-CTR to OUHSC, and the Gullatt endowment at OUHSC. |
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