Changes in the Production of Complex Syntax by Elementary-Aged School Children

The results of this study indicated that, as children's age increased, they produced more utterances with the coordinating conjunctions "but" and "so." Furthermore, irrespective of children's age, approximately 30% of complex utterances included a nominal and/or adverbial subordinate clause. These results were obtained from 50-utterance language samples and further support the use of language sampling to develop intervention goals and monitor progress in intervention.