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Rationale: Transcription of conjoined independent clauses within language samples varies across professionals. Some leave these clauses together, while others break them into two utterances. To learn more about this transcription decision, we examined the number of conjoined independent clauses produced by children and the impact of these clauses on their MLUs by the children’s dialect, clinical status, and age. Methods: The data were 236 language samples from children who spoke either African American English or Southern White English and who were classified as either 6-year-olds with DLD, 6-year-olds with TD, or 4-year-olds with TD. Results: The number of conjoined independent clauses and the impact of these clauses on the children’s MLUs varied by their clinical status (DLD < TD) and age (TD4 < TD6) but not their dialect. Conclusion: Transcription decisions regarding conjoined independent clauses within samples lead to equitable effects on MLU across dialects. Nevertheless, breaking conjoined independent clauses into two utterances may reduce one’s ability to detect syntactic differences between children with and without DLD and syntactic growth as children age.
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