Computer analysis of the language of deaf children
Barbara G. Parkhurst, Marian P. Mac Eachron · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1979
The use of a computer parsing system for analyzing speech and language development in deaf children is being investigated. To this end, a computer system (machine) capable of a detailed grammatical analysis of written language was compared with a skilled speech/language pathologist (human>) for agreement in parsing a corpus of written material produced by deaf children ages 10–14 years according to phrase structure. Sentences were preedited for spelling and major punctuation markers with all other errors left intact. In addition to identifying the various phrase types (noun, verb, prepositional, adjectival, adverbial, infinitive and participial phrases, as well as complements), the proportion correct of several of these phrase types was obtained. An overall score of grammatical correctness was also awarded each sample by human and machine. Results showed excellent agreement between human and machine in terms of parsing sentences of the complexity used by deaf children as well as identifying a large number of specific syntactic error types.