Using Dialect Discovery Worksheets to Learn About Children's Linguistic Strengths and Weaknesses

Abstract

Purpose

Dialect discovery worksheets focus on children's dialect-appropriate form productivity and sensitivity to linguistic context within a dialect. Focusing on tense and agreement (T/A) forms in African American English (AAE), we demonstrate how these worksheets can be used to reveal grammar strengths in children with typical development (TD) and grammar weaknesses in those with developmental language disorder (DLD).

Method

The participants were four kindergartners who spoke AAE (two males and two females; two DLD; two TD). The data were archival and came from an elicitation task. Using the worksheets, we categorized and quantified the participant's T/A dialect-general overt forms, dialect-specific overt forms, and zero forms by linguistic context.

Results

The TD participants demonstrated form productivity, producing significant numbers of T/A dialect-general overt, dialect-specific overt, and zero forms. They also varied their overt forms and zero forms in ways that demonstrated sensitivity to linguistic context. Those with DLD did not demonstrate form productivity, and they lacked variation in form use by linguistic context.

Conclusion

Dialect discovery worksheets provide useful information about children's grammar systems within the context of their dialect(s). These worksheets should be considered for clinical practice and preprofessional student training.

 

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Keywords

African American English - assessment - treatment - DLD

Learning Outcomes: As a result of this activity, the reader will be able to:

• Describe and give an example of a dialect-general overt form, dialect-specific overt form, and zero form for past tense within AAE.

• Describe the formula for calculating a child's percent of overt forms for plural subject auxiliary BE past (e.g., “the puppets were/was building a tower”) within AAE using dialect-informed, strategic scoring.

• Explain differences between an AAE-speaking child with and without DLD in terms of T/A form productivity and sensitivity to linguistic context.

Speech-language pathologists assess, treat, and advocate for individuals who present with a variety of speech and language disorders within linguistically diverse communities. A linguistically diverse community includes not only monolingual and multilingual speakers of various languages but also mono(dia)lectal and multi(dia)lectal speakers of English. Unfortunately, although several dialects of English are spoken in the United States, General American English (GAE) remains the primary dialect affirmed, taught, and tested in school.

Perhaps early studies of English language acquisition based on GAE are understandable given the dialects of the research pioneers, such as Roger Brown who studied Adam, Eve, and Sarah. However, the field has progressed, and there is now a growing number of multilectal researchers who are passionate about developing materials and practices that are dialect-appropriate for all children. Dialect discovery worksheets are tools created from these efforts. Clinicians can use dialect discovery worksheets to learn about the various types of overt forms and zero forms children produce to express grammatical structure within their dialects and the relative frequencies (i.e., productivity) of these form types overall and by clausal context. A focus on grammatical productivity is important for clinical practice because across dialects of English, children with language impairments often present with a less productive grammatical system than their same dialect-speaking, typically developing peers (Hendricks & Adlof, 2020; Oetting et al., 2019; 2021; 2022; Rice, 2003).

The goal of this study is to demonstrate the clinical utility of a dialect discovery worksheet focused on tense and agreement (T/A) structures using archival data from four kindergartners who spoke a rural southern variety of African American English (AAE). As background, we describe the conceptual framework and empirical evidence supporting the worksheets.

The Disorder Within Dialects Framework

Dialect discovery worksheets were created from the disorder within dialects framework (Oetting, 2018; 2024; Oetting et al., 2016; 2022; Oetting & Gregory-Martin, in press). This framework is cross-linguistic and can be applied to any linguistic variety (whether described as a language or a dialect), including AAE. Key to the framework is the consideration of a child's entire linguistic system (Green, 2011). For T/A, this means examining all overt forms and zero forms a child uses to express T/A. The disorder within dialects approach is also focused on individual differences within a dialect and is less concerned about differences between dialects. Given this, the disorder within dialects approach leads to questions that differ from those asked when guided by the traditional, dialect versus disorder approach. Whereas the dialect versus disorder approach focuses on whether a child's utterance or response is reflective of a dialect or a disorder, we ask whether a child demonstrates a productive repertoire of dialect-appropriate T/A forms (i.e., able to express different types of T/A forms with a diverse set of verbs) and presents form use that is sensitive to linguistic context in ways that are dialect-appropriate and age-appropriate relative to same dialect-speaking peers.

Guided by the disorder within dialects framework, members from our research lab have conducted several studies focused on T/A structures across dialects of English, including rural and urban dialects of AAE and rural dialects of Southern White English, Cajun English, and Gullah/Geechee-influenced AAE (e.g., Berry & Oetting, 2017; Cleveland & Oetting, 2013; Oetting & Garrity, 2006). These structures include auxiliary forms of BE in the present and past tense (e.g., “is, are, was, were, Ø”), regular and irregular past tense (e.g., “mowed, threw, throwed, had show, mowØ”), and regular verbal “-s” (e.g., “shows, showØ”). Within these examples and as will be discussed later, zero forms are denoted by the symbol “Ø.” We include these zero forms and several other types of dialect-appropriate overt forms in these examples to illustrate the larger repertoire of forms found in AAE than in GAE. Many other dialects of English spoken in and outside of the United States also contain a larger repertoire of zero forms and overt forms than found in GAE (c.f., Britian, 2024; Hickey, 2014). We note this to advocate for greater recognition of the English dialect variation that exists worldwide and to encourage more studies of childhood developmental language disorder (DLD) within these dialects of English.

Across dialects of English, there is evidence that children with DLD are delayed in their development of T/A compared to their same-age and same dialect-speaking typically developing (TD) peers (for AAE and SWE, see Garrity & Oetting, 2010; Oetting, 2019; Oetting et al., 2016; 2019, 2021; Oetting & Garrity, 2006; Oetting & McDonald, 2001; for past tense data in AAE, see Seymour et al., 1998; for a mix of dialects, see Hendricks & Adlof, 2020; for a review of many studies conducted in GAE, see Rice, 2003). To illustrate, it is useful to consider the published study by Oetting et al. (2019) from which the current four cases were extracted. The AAE group included 70 kindergartners, with half classified as DLD and the other half as TD, and their data were elicited from probes targeting T/A forms. When the data from all probes were combined, the DLD group's dialect-appropriate overt forms averaged 43% (SD = 22%) compared to the TD group's 71% (SD = 20%).

AAE-speaking children with DLD have also been found to benefit from language interventions that allow forms of T/A structures to serve as targets when form productivity is limited. As an example, Smith and Bellon-Harn (2015) completed a treatment study involving 10 AAE-speaking preschoolers with DLD. The treatment involved storybook reading, and forms of auxiliary “is” and “are” were two of many grammatical structures targeted with expansions, cloze procedures, and modeling. At baseline, the preschoolers produced few clauses (n = 160) to support an auxiliary form, and within these clauses, very low percentages of dialect-appropriate overt forms (“is” = 6% and “are” = 7%). Following treatment, the preschoolers increased their total auxiliary clauses to 384 and their average percentages of dialect-appropriate overt forms to 47% in “is” clausal contexts and 21% in “are” clausal contexts. As shown by this study, targeting T/A structures, such as auxiliaries, led to important gains for the AAE-speaking children with DLD.

It is also noteworthy that as the preschoolers with DLD increased their use of auxiliary clauses and auxiliary forms, their percentage of overt forms was higher for “is” contexts than for “are” contexts (47 vs. 21). Adults and TD children who speak AAE show this same sensitivity to linguistic context, producing higher percentages of overt forms for “is” contexts than for “are” contexts (Blake, 1997; Oetting et al., 2019; 2021; Rickford et al., 1991; Roy et al., 2013; Wyatt, 1996). Thus, as the preschoolers with DLD developed a more productive auxiliary system, their auxiliary forms also showed sensitivity to linguistic context as is appropriate for their dialect of AAE.

 

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Labels to Describe the Large Repertoire of T/A Forms Within AAE

As mentioned earlier, AAE has a large repertoire of surface forms to express T/A. As an example, speakers of AAE can produce multiple surface forms when expressing the past tense of the verb “find,” including “found, fount, founded, finded, had found, had find, and findØ.” Over the years, researchers and clinicians have grappled with how to talk about the larger repertoire of surface forms for AAE as compared to GAE. Seymour et al. (1998) introduced the labels, noncontrastive and contrastive, while we and others have used the labels, mainstream and nonmainstream (e.g., Hendricks & Adlof, 2020; Oetting et al., 2019; Terry et al., 2012) or mainstream and AAE (e.g., Byrd & Brown, 2021; Washington et al., 2018). With all three sets of labels, the first in the pair (i.e., noncontrastive and mainstream) refers to AAE forms shared with GAE and the second (i.e., contrastive, nonmainstream, and AAE) refers to forms found in AAE but not in GAE.

As authors, we have recently moved away from these labels because they require a reference to GAE to be meaningful. These labels also divide the grammar of AAE into two components (those shared and not shared with GAE), which makes it difficult to study how children make use of their entire linguistic system to communicate with others and succeed in school. Finally, the label, nonmainstream has a negative connotation to us and some of our students and colleagues. Indeed, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines nonmainstream as an adjective that means “not having, reflecting, or being compatible with the prevailing attitudes and values of a society or group: not belonging…” (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonmainstream).

As an alternative, we have adopted three terms that do not require a reference to GAE. The use of three labels rather than two also adds scientific precision to practice and facilitates the study of AAE as a complex linguistic system. The three terms are: dialect-general overt forms, dialect-specific overt forms, and zero forms. Descriptions and examples of these forms are as follows.

Dialect-General Overt Forms

These forms are morphemes one can perceive as a listener, and they are found in many dialects of English. Examples of AAE dialect-general overt forms documented in the current work include: “The girl ‘is’ painting; The ladies ‘are’ sneezing; The bear ‘was’ touching; The puppets ‘were’ building; The tiger mowed; The boy ‘threw’; The girl ‘dries’.”

 

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Dialect-Specific Overt Forms

These forms are morphemes one can also perceive as a listener, but they are found in only some dialects of English. Examples of AAE dialect-specific overt forms documented in the current work include the use of “is” and “was” with third-person plural subjects (e.g., “They's throwing, They was building”) and for past tense, preterite “had” (e.g., “had threw, had throw”) and regularized forms (e.g., “throwed, threwed”). Dialect-specific overt forms also exist for verbal “-s” (e.g., use with first-, second-, or third-person plural subjects, such as “I says, You says, They says”).

 

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Zero Forms

Zero forms are morphemes not perceived by the listener. Examples of AAE zero forms documented in the current work include: “The girl Ø painting; The ladies Ø sneezing; The bear Ø touching; The puppets Ø building; The tiger mowØ; The boy throwØ; The girl dryØ.”

Without careful study, zero forms are often misunderstood (Oetting et al., 2022). When very young AAE-speaking TD children are beginning to produce grammatical morphemes, a zero T/A form likely represents an omission, with the “Ø” form lacking grammatical content. As an example, consider AAE speaker CH, whose language samples were studied by Newkirk-Turner et al. (2016). At 1 year and 8 months of age, she produced 179 utterances, an MLU in morphemes of 2.64, five clauses that could support an auxiliary BE form, and within these clauses, three different auxiliary forms (i.e., “I'm, I'ma, Ø”). In addition, her clauses that supported these auxiliary BE forms were limited to declaratives.

However, as AAE-speaking TD children age, their linguistic systems become more complex, and their T/A zero forms begin to encode grammatical content just as their overt forms. To illustrate, consider AAE speaker CW, whose language samples were also studied by Newkirk-Turner et al. (2016). At 4 years and 3 months of age, he produced 235 utterances, an MLU in morphemes of 5.30, 36 auxiliary BE clauses, and eight different auxiliary forms (i.e., “I'm, I'ma, Ø, ain't, it's, was, they is, they're”). Across his language samples, his clauses supporting auxiliary BE forms also diversified to include not only declaratives but also questions, negation, and ellipses. Moreover, his use of dialect-general overt, dialect-specific overt, and zero forms varied by linguistic context in ways that were consistent with a more mature version of AAE. Specifically, he produced higher percentages of dialect-general overt forms and dialect-specific overt forms for “am” and “was” clausal contexts than for “is” clausal contexts, and higher percentages of overt forms for all three of these clausal contexts than for “are” clausal contexts. CW's sensitivity to linguistic context when producing his overt and zero forms provides evidence of grammatical encoding for both form types. In other words, whereas 1 year and 8-month-old CH's zero forms reflected grammatical omissions, 4 years and 3-month-old CW's zero forms reflected phonetically silent and grammatically rich synonyms to his overt forms.

Other studies have also shown AAE-speaking TD children's use of T/A forms to be sensitive to linguistic context. Roy et al. (2013) examined auxiliary BE forms as produced within language samples by 24 AAE-speaking preschoolers, aged 4 to 6 years. Consistent with CW's data, the 4-year-olds produced dialect-general and dialect-specific overt forms 58% of the time, and the 6-year-olds produced these forms 64% of the time. In addition, their use of overt forms and zero forms varied by linguistic context, yielding a high percentage (>90%) of overt forms for “was, were, and am” clausal contexts, a lower percentage (59%) for “is” clausal contexts, and the lowest percentage (27%) for “are” clausal contexts. As was found for 4-years and 3-month-old CW, these AAE-speaking TD children were producing syntactically rich zero forms and demonstrating dialect-appropriate sensitivity to linguistic context when producing their overt forms and zero forms.

 

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Dialect-Informed, Strategic Scoring

A final concept that is important for measures of grammar within a dialect is how percentages of overt form use are calculated. All the reviewed studies calculated percentages of overt form use by combining a child's number of dialect-general overt forms and dialect-specific overt forms and dividing this sum by the child's total number of dialect-general overt, dialect-specific overt, and zero forms. Calculating percentages in this way reflects what we refer to as dialect-informed, strategic scoring. With this scoring approach, the full repertoire of T/A forms (dialect-general overt, dialect-specific overt, and zero) within a child's dialect is viewed as appropriate, and the focus is on the relative frequencies of overt forms and zero forms.

Elsewhere we have compared strategic scoring to two other scoring systems, referred to as unmodified and modified (Oetting et al., 2019; 2021; see also Girolamo et al., 2024; Hendricks et al., 2023). Unmodified scoring is implemented when a test designed for GAE is given to a child who speaks AAE, and the child's responses are not scored with modification for the child's dialect; this scoring system does not recognize the child's AAE-appropriate responses. Modified scoring systems are often encouraged within manuals of tests designed for GAE. With these scoring systems, clinicians are encouraged to score as correct any response that is dialect-appropriate. Unfortunately, this scoring system does not consider important individual differences in the relative frequencies at which different types of dialect-appropriate forms are produced by children who vary in age (younger vs. older) or language ability (DLD vs. TD). Given strategic scoring's focus on children's relative frequencies of dialect-appropriate forms, it is sensitive to both developmental change and childhood DLD.

We now turn to the four case studies to demonstrate the usefulness of dialect discovery worksheets for clinical practice. Dialect discovery worksheets can be created for any aspect of a child's grammar system, but here we crafted the worksheets to examine the participants' repertoire of overt and zero T/A forms and their sensitivity to linguistic context when producing their forms. Consistent with the disorder within dialects framework, clinicians can use results from the worksheets to determine if a child's use of forms to express T/A is productive (i.e., able to express different types of T/A forms with a diverse set of verbs) and whether the child's form use shows sensitivity to linguistic context in ways that are expected for the dialect being learned.

 

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Methods

Participants

Data for the four participants were from Oetting et al. (2019); a subset of data from two of these participants was also presented as part of a learner activity within Oetting and Gregory-Martin (in press). We refer to these four participants as Tyson and Tia and Devin and Destiny. Tyson and Tia were classified as TD, and Devin and Destiny were classified as DLD. DLD is a clinical condition that, in the original study, was referred to as specific language impairment; as with other studies of childhood SLI, the profile for those with SLI present low language abilities with age-appropriate nonverbal abilities and articulation skills and without other clinical conditions, such as autism, Down syndrome, etc.

Tyson and Devin were male and Tia and Destiny were female. All were enrolled in a public kindergarten in the rural south. Their ages spanned 61 to 68 months, and their mothers' highest level of education spanned 9 to 17 years, with 12 reflecting completion of high school. The four children were selected for this case study by first identifying an African American male and female in the DLD group in the datafile and then finding an African American child in the TD group of similar gender and age. Race was reported by the children's caregivers. Also, per caregiver report, the four children were not identified as Hispanic or bilingual.

Tyson and Tia did not have a family history of speech or language impairments, and neither received services from a speech-language pathologist. Devin and Destiny had a positive family history of speech and language impairment, although only Destiny was receiving services from a speech-language pathologist. Finally, the dialects of all four participants were perceived to be AAE by three independent listeners during a blinded listener judgment task. The dialects of all four participants were also classified as reflecting strong variation from mainstream English as measured by the Language Variation subtest of the “Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation: Screening Test” (DELV-ST; Seymour et al., 2003). This screener does not classify children's dialects as AAE, GAE, or any other named dialect but instead classifies the children's dialects as either mainstream, some variation from the mainstream, or strong variation from the mainstream. We retain the screener's dialect classification labels here to be consistent with others who may use this screener to describe the dialects of clients or research participants.

As part of the original study, the participants were administered a battery of assessments, including the “Primary Test of Nonverbal Intelligence” (PTONI; Ehrler & McGhee, 2008), Sounds-in-Words subtest of the “Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation-2” (GFTA-2; Goldman & Fristoe, 2000), Risk subtest of the DELV-ST, Syntax subtest of the “Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation: Norm Referenced” (DELV-NR; Seymour et al., 2005), and the “Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-4” (PPVT-4; Dunn, 2007).

As shown in [Table 1], all four participants' standard scores on the GFTA-2 and PTONI were above 84; these tests have a normative mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. On the Risk subtest of the DELV-ST, Tyson, and Tia, the TD participants were identified as low risk for language impairment, whereas Devin and Destiny, the participants with DLD, were identified as either medium to high risk or high risk for language impairment. Similarly, on the Syntax subtest of the DELV-NR, Tyson, and Tia earned a standard score above 7, and Devin and Destiny earned a standard score below this level; this subtest has a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 3. Finally, the children's PPVT-4 standard scores ranged from 68 to 105; this test has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. It was administered for descriptive purposes only given concerns regarding the validity of this measure for identifying children with DLD (Gray et al., 1999; Ukrainetz & Duncan, 2000). As shown, Tyson scored above the normative mean on the PPVT-4, and the others scored close to or below—1 SD of the normative mean.

Table 1 Participant profiles

Participant	Tyson	Tia	Devin	Destiny
Clinical group	TD	TD	DLD	DLD
Gender	M	F	M	F
Age (mo)	68	61	64	63
MED	17	13	9	11
Family history	No	No	Yes	Yes
Receiving services	No	No	No	Yes
GFTA-2	95	110	94	84
PTONI	95	103	94	84
DELV-ST dialect	Strong variation	Strong variation	Strong variation	Strong variation
DELV-ST risk	Low-risk	Low-risk	Medium to high-risk	High-risk
DELV-NR	10	11	5	3
PPVT-4	105	86	78	68

 

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Data

Data for the case studies were elicited using four probes presented through PowerPoint slides on laptops. The probes were designed to elicit a child's full repertoire of T/A forms with 64 different verbs; 16 items were included in each probe (auxiliary BE present “is” and “are,” auxiliary BE past “was” and “were,” past tense, and verbal “-s”). For each item, participants were shown a video of either children, adults, or puppets completing an action. The actions were 4 seconds for auxiliary BE present tense, past tense, and verbal “-s” items and 6 seconds for auxiliary BE past tense items. One probe was administered each day, with the order counterbalanced across participants. A description of the prompts and verbs targeted within the probes can be found in Oetting et al. (2019); however, we re-present some of the information here to explain how the participants' T/A forms were elicited.

Auxiliary BE Present

This probe included eight third-person singular present auxiliary BE (e.g., “is”) contexts and eight third-person plural present auxiliary BE (e.g., are) contexts. Nouns were used as subjects and combined with 16 different verbs. For each item, a participant was given a verbal prompt accompanied by an action in a still frame (e.g., “The ladies seem sick. Tell me what you see”). Then, the action was played to elicit a participant's response (e.g., “The ladies/they are/is/Ø sneezing”). As shown by this example, the participants' dialect of AAE allowed them to produce a dialect-general overt form, dialect-specific overt form, or zero form for these items.

 

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Auxiliary BE Past

This probe included eight third-person singular past auxiliary BE (e.g., “was”) contexts and eight third-person plural past auxiliary BE (e.g., “were”) contexts. Nouns were again used as subjects and combined with 16 different verbs. For each item, the examiner used an imperative context to introduce the target verb (e.g., “Watch the guys cut paper”). Then the action was played while the examiner repeated the prompt twice. During the third prompt and with the action in play, the examiner covered the screen with paper and posed a question (e.g., “Before I covered this up, what do you remember seeing”). This question encouraged participants to respond based on their memory of the action (e.g., “The guys/they were/was/Ø cutting paper”). As shown by this example, the participant's dialect of AAE allowed them to produce a dialect-general overt form, dialect-specific overt form, or a zero form for these items.

 

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Past Tense

This probe included eight regular, past-tense main verb contexts and eight irregular, past-tense main verb contexts. The verbs selected for the regular contexts ended with a vowel (e.g., “tie”), liquid (e.g., “tear”), or glide (e.g., “throw”), but those selected for the irregular contexts were free to vary in phonetic composition. Also, all 16 verbs were followed by “a” or “an” to increase transcription reliability. To encourage the participants to produce verbs with past tense, four action videos were shown sequentially in four quadrants on the screen. For each item, the examiner presented the target verb in an imperative context while simultaneously playing the action (e.g., “Watch the doll ride a scooter. Watch her ride a scooter. Now she's done”). When an action within a quadrant ended, it stayed in the still frame to reduce the memory load for the participant. After the four actions were in a still frame, the examiner prompted the participant to describe the completed actions using temporal adverbs (e.g., Now you tell me, “First…; Then …; Then …; Then …”). This presentation and prompting format encouraged participants to describe the four past events in a sequence (e.g., First, “she drew/drawØ/drawed/drewed/had draw/had drew/had drawed/had drewed a picture, then…”). As shown by this example, the participants' dialect of AAE allowed them to produce several different dialect-general overt forms, dialect-specific overt forms, and zero forms for these items.

 

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Verbal “-s”

This probe included eight actions within a third-person singular habitual context and eight actions within a third-person singular nonhabitual context. We refer to this morpheme as verbal “-s” here and elsewhere instead of third-person singular because AAE and some other dialects of English allow the “-s” morpheme to attach to verbs in other person contexts (e.g., “I says, they comes”). Nevertheless, the probe administered was limited to third-person singular contexts. All verbs within this probe ended in a glide (e.g., “chew”) or vowel (e.g., “see”) to encourage a diverse repertoire of T/A forms. Also, negative contrast was used to introduce the target verb following the work of Seymour et al. (2003). To use negative contrast, the examiner played the action two times while providing prompts describing what the agent of the action was not doing (e.g., “This is a girl. She doesn't dry a spoon. She doesn't dry a cup”). Then, the examiner played the action a third time and asked the participant to describe what the agent was doing (e.g., “She dries/dryØ a plate”). The habitual prompts included the added word, “always,” in an attempt to encode an action that occurred often, whereas the nonhabitual prompts did not, in an attempt to encode an action that could occur once and at the moment of viewing. As shown by the examples, the participants' AAE dialect allowed them to produce a dialect-general overt form or zero form. Since all subjects were singular, the probe did not give the participants an opportunity to produce dialect-specific overt verbal “-s” forms.

 

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Coding the T/A Forms

The participants' responses during the probes were audio-recorded for later coding in the lab. Even though the probes were designed to elicit T/A forms with specific subjects and verbs, participants were free to respond in other ways, and all targeted T/A forms were coded based on the participant's produced clause structure. In other words, participants could produce a singular subject for a plural subject and vice versa, a regular verb for an irregular one and vice versa, and the word, “always,” to an item designed to be nonhabitual and vice versa. The participants were also free to produce a different verb than the target if the verb was not included within an earlier response on the day the probe was administered.

For each targeted T/A clausal context, the children's responses were coded as either dialect-general overt, dialect-specific overt, or zero (see [Table 2] for examples of responses from the case studies presented here). As shown in the table, the participant's use of “is” for a plural subject auxiliary present tense context was scored as a dialect-specific overt form in the “are” column, and a child's use of “was” for a plural subject auxiliary past tense context was scored as dialect-specific in the “were” column.

Table 2 Examples of elicited T/A forms from the four participants

	Dialect-general overt	Dialect-specific overt	Zero
Auxiliary BE singular subject present	is painting	–	Ø clapping
Auxiliary BE plural subject present	are giving	's punching is giving	Ø washing
Auxiliary BE singular subject past	was feeding	–	Ø rocking
Auxiliary BE plural subject past	were building	was building	Ø building
Regular and irregular past tense	mowed drew	teared drawed had dyed had throwed had threw	showØ catchØ
Regular verbal “-s”	chews buys	–	flyØ emptyØ

The probes also elicited some un-scoreable responses from the participants, and those with DLD produced more un-scorable responses than the TD children. In the original study, these responses and others were coded as other. For dialect discovery worksheets and the four cases highlighted here, unscorable responses were those that did not obligate a dialect-general overt, dialect-specific overt, or zero form for the targeted T/A clausal context. For example, if a participant produced, “they are building” during the auxiliary BE past (“was/were”) probe, this T/A form was deemed unscorable for auxiliary BE past. Similarly, if the participant produced, “he walks” during the past tense probe, this T/A form was deemed unscorable for past tense.

Across all four probes, zero T/A forms also were deemed unscorable if the participant produced a verb in isolation (e.g., “pull, build, mow, show”). In other words, for a zero form to be scorable, participants had to produce a subject preceding the verb (e.g., “‘The girl’ swallowØ”) and for the auxiliary BE contexts, they also had to produce a verb with a present progressive morpheme (The tiger “Ø mowing”). When children produced a verb in isolation, examiners prompted the participants to try the item again with a subject (e.g., “Try it again but start with the tiger”). If a participant provided a revised response with the required elements to confirm the clausal structure, the revised response was scored.

The practice of not scoring verbs in isolation in studies of T/A follows work by Rice and colleagues (for a review of works, see Rice, 2003), because a verb in isolation may reflect the production of an action label, which does not obligate a T/A form. As such, verbs in isolation are uninformative as to the participants' repertoire of T/A forms. Nevertheless, several unscorable responses, especially after repeated examiner prompting, provide information about a participant's ability to use the materials and prompts to generate clausal structure.

 

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Completing the Dialect Discovery Worksheets

Once a participant's responses were coded, a dialect discovery worksheet was completed (see [Table 3]). The worksheet provides a cell to record each participant's number of each type of T/A form (i.e., dialect-general, dialect-specific, and zero) by clausal context. Finally, the last column in the worksheet allows the clinician to combine the participant's number of forms across the clausal contexts. At the bottom of the worksheet is a row for the clinician to calculate percentages of overt forms by each clausal context and an overall percentage of overt form use across contexts. As described earlier, strategic scoring was used to calculate percentages of overt form use. Recall that strategic scoring combines the participant's number of dialect-general overt forms and dialect-specific overt forms and divides this sum by the participant's total number of dialect-general overt forms, dialect-specific overt forms, and zero forms.

Table 3 Blank dialect discovery worksheet for T/A forms

Child	Form	Elicited context
		Is	Are	Was	Were	Past tense	Verbal “-s”	Overall
	Dialect-general overt
	Dialect-specific overt
	Zero
	Percent overt

Note: Is = third-person singular subject BE present; are = third-person plural subject BE present; was = third-person singular subject BE past; were = third-person plural subject BE past; past tense = main verb regular and irregular past tense; verbal “-s” = main verb habitual and nonhabitual third-person singular subject present.

 

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Results

[Table 4] provides completed dialect discovery worksheets for Tyson and Tia, the two participants classified as TD, and [Table 5] provides this same information for Devin and Destiny, the two participants classified as DLD. Below, we describe the results from these worksheets, focusing on the children's form productivity and use of their various forms as a function of clausal context.

Table 4 Dialect discovery worksheet for participants Tyson and Tia

Child	Form	Elicited context
		Is	Are	Was	Were	Past tense	Verbal “-s”	Overall
Tyson	Dialect-general overt	8	0	8	0	10	10	36
	Dialect-specific overt	0	7	0	8	3	0	18
	Zero	0	1	0	0	3	6	10
	Percent overt (%)	100	88	100	100	81	63	84
Tia	Dialect-general overt	7	0	8	0	5	0	20
	Dialect-specific overt	0	5	0	7	1	0	13
	Zero	1	3	0	0	10	16	30
	Percent overt (%)	88	63	100	100	38	0	52

Notes: Percent overt form use with strategic scoring = ([dialect-general overt forms + dialect-specific overt forms]/[dialect-general overt forms + dialect-specific overt forms + zero forms]) × 100. Is = third-person singular subject BE present; are = third-person plural subject BE present; was = third-person singular subject BE past; were = third-person plural subject BE past; past tense = main verb regular and irregular past tense; and verbal “-s” = main verb habitual and nonhabitual third-person singular subject present.

Table 5 Dialect discovery worksheet for participants Devin and Destiny

Child	Form	Elicited context
		Is	Are	Was	Were	Past tense	Verbal “-s”	Overall
Devin	Dialect-general overt	0	0	0	0	2	0	2
	Dialect-specific overt	0	0	0	0	3	0	3
	Zero	8	7	0	1	9	16	41
	Percent overt (%)	0	0	0	<1	36	0	11
Destiny	Dialect-general overt	0	1	0	0	2	2	5
	Dialect-specific overt	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Zero	4	5	8	7	12	14	50
	Percent overt (%)	0	17	0	0	14	13	9

Notes: Percent overt form use with strategic scoring = ([dialect-general overt forms + dialect-specific overt forms]/[dialect-general overt forms + dialect-specific overt forms + zero forms]) × 100. Is = third-person singular subject BE present; are = third-person plural subject BE present; was = third-person singular subject BE past; were = third-person plural subject BE past; past tense = main verb regular and irregular past tense; and verbal “-s” = main verb habitual and nonhabitual third-person singular subject present.

Tyson

Tyson produced a scorable response for all 64 elicited contexts, of which 36 were dialect-general overt forms, 18 were dialect-specific overt forms, and 10 were zero forms. Recall that dialect-specific overt forms (e.g., “The puppets ‘was’ building; The lady ‘drawed’ a picture”) are not errors but reflect the large repertoire of forms and the productive nature of the TD system within AAE. With dialect-informed scoring, his overall percentage of T/A overt forms was 84 ([36 + 18]/[36 + 18 + 10]) × 100. Together, his high number of scorable T/A forms and his percentage of dialect-appropriate overt forms indicate that Tyson presented a productive T/A system. He also produced higher percentages of overt form use for “was” and “were” and “is” clausal contexts than for “are” clausal contexts (“was, were, is” = 100% > “are” = 88%), and a higher percentage of overt forms for past tense clausal contexts (81%) than for verbal “-s” clausal contexts (63%). This pattern of form use indicates that Tyson's use of T/A forms was sensitive to linguistic context in ways that were appropriate for his AAE dialect.

 

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Tia

Tia also produced many scorable T/A forms (n = 63 or 98%) for the 64 items. Of her scoreable responses, 20 involved a dialect-general overt form, 13 involved a dialect-specific overt form, and 30 involved a zero form. With dialect-informed, strategic scoring, her overall percentage of T/A overt forms was 52 ([20 + 13]/[20 + 13 + 30]) × 100. She also produced higher percentages of overt form use for “was” and “were” clausal contexts (100%) than for “is” clausal contexts (88%), and higher percentages of overt forms for all three of these clausal contexts than for “are” clausal contexts (63%). In addition, she produced a higher percentage of overt forms for past-tense clausal contexts (38%) than for verbal “-s” clausal contexts (0%). Like Tyson, Tia demonstrated a productive T/A system as evidenced by her high number of scoreable T/A forms and her pattern of form use, which showed sensitivity to linguistic context in ways that were appropriate for her dialect of AAE.

 

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Devin

Devin produced a scoreable response for only 46 (72%) of the 64 items. Of these 46 T/A forms, 2 were dialect-general overt, 3 were dialect-specific overt, and 41 were zero forms. With dialect-informed, strategic scoring, his overall percentage of overt forms was 11 ([2 + 3]/[2 + 3 + 41]) × 100. This finding shows that Devin did not have a productive repertoire of forms to express T/A. Instead, he relied heavily on zero forms. Moreover, his relative percentages of overt forms and zero forms to express auxiliaries were not yet showing sensitivity to linguistic context because he did not show higher percentages of overt forms in “was” and “were” clausal contexts than in “is” clausal contexts or “are” contexts. However, Devin showed a higher percentage of overt forms in past-tense clausal contexts (36%) than in verbal “-s” clausal contexts (0%), and this pattern of form use is appropriate for his dialect of AAE.

 

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Destiny

Destiny produced a scoreable response for only 55 (86%) of the 64 items. Of these 55 T/A forms, 5 were dialect-general overt and 50 were zero forms. With dialect-informed, strategic scoring, her overall percentage of overt forms was 9 ([5 + 0]/[5 + 0 + 50]) × 100. Like Devin, Destiny did not have a productive repertoire of forms to express T/A. Like Devin, she also relied heavily on zero forms. Finally, Destiny's relative percentages of overt forms and zero forms did not show sensitivity to linguistic context. Destiny did not show the expected pattern of higher percentages of overt forms in “was/were” > “is” > “are” auxiliary clausal contexts nor did she show a significantly higher percentage of overt forms in past tense clausal contexts (14%) than in verbal “-s” clausal contexts (13%).

 

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Conclusion

The disorder within dialects framework supports the study, assessment, and treatment of children with DLD within the context of their respective dialects. Dialect discovery worksheets were created from this framework to help clinicians do this. To illustrate the clinical usefulness of these worksheets, we created a worksheet focused on children's T/A forms and filled it out using elicitation probe data from four participants who spoke AAE. The AAE dialects of all four participants were classified on the DELV-ST as showing strong variation from mainstream English, and they all attended a public kindergarten in the rural south. In the original study, two participants were classified as TD and two as DLD; in each of these groups, male and female participants were selected to demonstrate that it was the participants' clinical condition and not their gender that contributed to the results.

Results from the dialect discovery worksheets showed that the two TD participants produced many different scoreable T/A forms when completing the elicitation probes (i.e., 63 and 64 out of 64 possible). In addition, the participant's percentages of overt forms were calculated as 84 and 52. These percentages differ from each other, but both are within the range expected for AAE-speaking TD kindergartners. In the original study by Oetting et al. (2019), the TD group's average percentage of overt form use with strategic scoring was 71 (SD = 20%), and the range was 35 to 100.

Both TD participants also demonstrated sensitivity to linguistic context when producing their T/A forms. Tia's patterns of overt form percentages by linguistic context were identical to patterns documented within previous adult and child AAE studies, with her patterns summarized as: “was” and “were” clausal contexts > “is” clausal contexts > “are” clausal contexts; main verb past tense clausal contexts > main verb verbal “-s” clausal contexts. In other words, within her auxiliary system and with main verbs, she produced higher percentages of overt T/A forms expressing the past than the present. Tyson's patterns of overt form percentages by linguistic contexts were like Tia's although his percentages of overt forms of “is” contexts were higher than is typically observed within AAE, with his patterns of overt forms summarized as: “was, were, is” clausal contexts > “are” clausal contexts; main verb past tense clausal contexts > main verb verbal “-s” clausal contexts. Several studies of adults and child studies that have shown similar linguistic context effects for auxiliaries (Blake, 1997; Newkirk-Turner et al., 2014; Oetting et al., 2019; 2021; Rickford et al., 1991; Roy et al., 2013; Smith & Bellon-Harn, 2015; Wyatt, 1996), and there are a few child studies showing higher percentages of overt forms for past tense clausal contexts than verbal “-s” clausal contexts (Green, 2019; Oetting, 2019; Oetting et al., 2021; but see Hendricks & Adlof, 2020 who did not find this pattern).

Compared to the participants classified as TD, Devin, and Destiny produced fewer scorable T/A forms when completing the elicitation probes (i.e., 46 and 55 out of 64 possible). Fewer scorable T/A forms indicate that both Devin and Destiny struggled to use the materials and examiner prompts to produce clauses to support a T/A form. Devin and Destiny also did not produce a diverse set of dialect-general overt forms, dialect-specific overt forms, and zero forms. As a consequence, their percentages of overt form use were very low at 11 and 9. Compared to the original study, these percentages are lower than the lowest percentage produced by an AAE-speaking TD child. Also, Devin and Destiny did not produce their T/A forms in a way that demonstrated sensitivity to linguistic context. Instead, both DLD children relied heavily on zero forms for all T/A clausal contexts elicited.

Implications for Clinical Practice

The four case studies presented here show how dialect discovery worksheets focused on T/A can be used to identify the grammar strengths of children classified as TD and the grammar weaknesses of children classified as DLD within the dialect of AAE. Recall that only Destiny was receiving services from a speech-language pathologist. Had a dialect discovery worksheet been available, a clinician may have been able to use it to explore Devin's linguistic system, especially if his caregivers and teachers raised concerns about his language abilities. Although results from a dialect discovery worksheet in isolation would never qualify a child for services, these results could be used to support other assessment measures. Following a convergence of evidence approach to assessment (Castilla-Earls et al., 2020), Devin may have qualified for services using results from a dialect discovery worksheet along with caregiver and teacher input, classroom observation, analysis of a language sample, and a dialect-appropriate norm-referenced test such as the DELV-NR.

For children with DLD (including Devin and Destiny), dialect discovery worksheets can also help a clinician develop treatment goals. Based on the worksheets, Devin and Destiny likely would have benefited from a goal focused on increasing their production of diverse clausal structures to support T/A forms and a goal focused on increasing their production of dialect-general overt forms, dialect-specific overt forms, and zero forms with a diverse set of verbs within these clauses. This latter goal could also be written with the added criterion that their T/A forms show dialect-appropriate sensitivity to linguistic context, with higher percentages of overt forms within clausal contexts expressing the past (“was, were,” and past tense on main verbs) compared to clausal contexts expressing the present (i.e., “is, are,” and verbal “-s” on main verbs).

Regarding treatment approaches, expansion, cloze procedures, and modeling within the context of storybook reading may be ideal for young children like Devin and Destiny who produce limited numbers of clauses to support T/A forms and showed a heavy and dialect-inappropriate reliance on zero forms. Recall that these methods were implemented in Smith and Bellon-Harn's (2015) treatment study of AAE-speaking preschoolers with DLD. After treatment, increases were seen in the frequency at which the preschoolers produced clausal structures to support auxiliaries and in their percentages of dialect-appropriate overt forms within these clauses.

 

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Limitations

For T/A structures and these types of goals to be incorporated into clinical practice, clinicians will need to embrace the study, assessment, and treatment of childhood DLD within the context of children's respective dialect(s) and become proficient in the use of dialect discovery worksheets and dialect-informed, strategic scoring. The authors acknowledge that clinicians have varying levels of linguistic knowledge about grammar structures within and across dialects of English, and a certain level of knowledge is needed to utilize the worksheets. Future plans by the authors include creating training tutorials to facilitate clinicians' use of the worksheets. Prompting children to produce forms for specific T/A structures from materials and learning how to code children's forms as either dialect-general overt, dialect-specific overt, zero, or un-scorable for the target T/A structure also takes practice. Neither of these examiner behaviors is part of current pedagogy in the field of speech-language pathology. Also, additional dialect discovery worksheets focused on other aspects of grammar need to be developed as not all children with DLD show T/A weaknesses within their dialect.

Third, the current study focused on archival data from four participants who participated in a previously published group comparison study. Although results for the four participants mirrored those reported for the groups in the published study, dialect discovery worksheets should be completed with more children, children of different ages, and children who speak other varieties of AAE and other dialects of English. It would be wrong to assume that all children perceived to speak a dialect of AAE (or any other dialect of English, including AAE as influenced by another language, such as Spanish) will produce their T/A forms following the same linguistic patterns documented here. Indeed, a slightly different pattern of linguistic context effects has been documented for T/A forms in children whose AAE dialects have been influenced by Gullah Geechee—a Creole language spoken in South Carolina and elsewhere (Berry & Oetting, 2017). To help guide these future works, dialect discovery worksheets could be used as shown here or as modified to learn about these dialects and to better understand individual differences among children within their respective dialects.

 

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Conflict of Interest

None declared.

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Publication History

Article published online:
10 July 2025