A Comparison of Language Development in Persian and Persian-Turkish Speaking Preschoolers Using Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) as a Syntactic Measure

Mean length of utterance (MLU) is a measure of systematic assessing and describing of language development in children. This study aims to compare language development in Persian and Persian-Turkish Preschoolers by this syntactic measure in a descriptive-analytical method. To do so, 30 Persian and 30 Persian-Turkish preschoolers were selected from 3 age groups of 37-46, 47-56, and 57-66 months. After collecting language samples, data analysis was done by SPSS statistical software. Results show the high correlation between MLUm and MLUw. This supports Parker’s (2005) finding indicating that MLUm and MLUw can be effectively and interchangeably used to measure language development in children. On the other hand, there’s a significant difference between Persian and Persian-Turkish Preschoolers language development only at the age of 57-66 months, this is in line with the findings of some research such as Dahlgren et al. (2017) indicating the verbal performance superiority of monolingual children over their bilingual peers. The verbal performance of two language groups is the same at the earlier ages and they show similar language development with their age increasing.