Syntactic Production Ability of the Elderly According to Utterance and Sentence Analysis Criteria

Abstract

The important thing to consider when analyzing the performance of syntactic production is to set the basic criteria for analysis. Generally, ‘utterance’ that include incomplete clauses and ‘sentence’ that necessarily include complete clauses can be used as a basic criterion for analysis. Since utterances and sentences have different structural requirements, the results may differ depending on the basic criteria of analysis. The aim of the study is to confirm the differences in various analysis indicators according to the uttrance and sentence analysis criteria. To investigate syntactic characteristics according to age, 54 young people (27.31 ± 4.72), 48 middle-aged people (49.93 ± 5.80), and 40 old people (69.02 ± 5.44) participated. In the utterance analysis criteria, OA had fewer syllables, postpositional particles, endings, and grammatical morphemes than the YA. OA produced fewer mean length of utterance-word and the number of object case markers than the YA and MA. In the sentence analysis criteria, there was no difference in the number of syllables, postpositional particles, endings, and grammatical morphemes among the groups. These results suggest the applicability and basis of the sentence analysis criteria for investigating grammatical knowledge during syntax analysis.