| This investigation was conducted to study the linguistic home environment of the language-delayed child. The purposes of this study were: (a) to compare the language interactions of parents with language-delayed children and the language interactions of parents with children developing language normally, and (b) to compare the individual language interactions of mothers with fathers and their language-delayed child, and the individual interactions of mothers with fathers and their linguistically normal child.;Significant differences were found between the two groups during both the structured and the unstructured sessions. Parents of language-delayed children differed from parents of linguistically normal children in the frequency data of linguistic interactions, in the use of certain sentence types, and in the use of discourse features. Few differences were found between mothers and fathers within each group.;The language-delayed child may live in a different type of linguistic environment from the child developing language normally. Within each linguistic environment, however, a fairly consistent model is presented to the child from his/her mother and father.;Audio-recordings of child-directed language interactions were made of 20 couples, 10 of whom were parents with a language-delayed child and 10 of whom were parents of a child acquiring language in the usual manner. The children were matched for mean length of utterance to insure that they had similar language abilities. Each parent and child recorded a structured and an unstructured session of 15 minutes each in the home environment. |
