Tense Morphology in Clinicians’ Input During Complex Syntax Intervention for Children’s Academic Discourse and Literacy Across Dialects

Abstract

Across dialects of English, children with developmental language disorder demonstrate weaknesses in both tense morphology and complex syntax, yet intervention targets often address these domains separately. This study examined whether clinician input during a complex syntax intervention provides rich and varied models of tense morphology. Using a secondary analysis of data from 1 arm of a randomized controlled teletherapy trial, we analyzed clinician utterances during an intervention targeting complement clauses embedded in science instruction for 10 children with developmental language disorder (4-7 years old). A total of 1753 clinician utterances containing complement clauses were coded. Clinicians produced 2491 tense morphemes, with regular past tense occurring most frequently, followed by verbal -s and irregular past tense. Past tense morphemes occurred primarily in independent clauses, whereas present tense forms occurred more often in dependent clauses; copula and auxiliary BE forms were largely confined to dependent clauses. Clinicians produced 47 unique matrix verbs, most with overt tense marking. Results suggest that complement clause interventions can simultaneously support tense morphology through dense, structurally informative input, supporting integrated approaches to grammar intervention.

Children cannot engage in academic discourse and literacy without the ability to produce and comprehend complex syntax (Cross et al., 2019; Duff et al., 2023; Parkinson, 2013; Ziegenfusz et al., 2022). Evidence for this claim comes from a study by Curran (2020). She analyzed the texts and suggested teacher scripts of a common science curriculum for first, third, and fifth graders. Results showed that complex syntax was found in 17% to 29% of the sentences within the science texts and 31% to 39% of the suggested teacher utterances. Of the complex syntactic structures examined, complement clauses were the most frequently produced compared to relative and adverbial clauses. In addition, the greatest change in complex syntax frequency in the curricular materials across grades occured between first and third grade.

Sentences with complex syntax contain at least 1 independent clause and 1 dependent clause. This leads to sentences that include not only grammatical subordination but also likely more tense-associated morphological markers than those with simple syntax. To illustrate, note the underlined words that contain tense morphemes in the following 4 sentences:

• Sentence with simple syntax: The feather moved.

• Sentence with complement clause: We learned that air moves things.

• Sentence with relative clause: The air moved the feather that was sitting on the table.

• Sentence with adverbial clause: The feather is moving because the air became wind.

In the 3 sentences with complex syntax, twice as much tense morphology is produced compared to the sentence with simple syntax. In addition, the tense morphology within the sentences with complex syntax shows a great deal of grammatical variation, with 3 verbs produced with past tense (ie, learned, moved, became), 1 produced with present tense (ie, moves), and 2 produced with auxiliaries (ie, was sitting, is moving). For speech-language therapists, teachers, and caregivers, understanding the demands of both tense morphology and complex syntax within academic discourse and literacy is needed when a child with weak grammar skills struggles in the classroom. Understanding that these grammatical demands in school begin as early as first grade is also important so that services are provided before children fall behind their typically developing (TD) peers.

Children who come to school with weak grammar skills are not rare. Across dialects of English and several other languages, children with language impairments, including those with developmental language disorder (DLD), often present with significant weaknesses in grammar, and their grammar weaknesses affect their use of tense morphology and complex syntax (Schwartz, 2017). In the current study, we conducted a secondary analysis of 1 arm of an intervention study by Hiebert et al. (2025). The intervention targeted children’s productions of complement clauses, a type of complex syntax, within science lessons. Instead of focusing on the children’s language, however, we focus on the clinicians’ input to the children during the intervention. As will be reviewed, several studies have demonstrated the importance of therapy sessions with frequent and variable forms of language for optimal child benefit. Given this, we wanted to know if clinician input during an intervention targeting complement clauses provides children with rich and repeated models of both complex syntax and tense morphology. Given that high rates of exposure are needed to learn both, and as an initial foray into the question of whether both complex syntax and tense morphology can be addressed simultaneously, we ask if an adequate dose of tense morphology is provided during intervention focused on complex syntax. If we see that tense morphology is provided at a sufficiently intense dose, then treatment goals and progress monitoring of treatment effects may be enhanced by considering both areas of grammar together.

GRAMMAR WEAKNESSES OF CHILDREN WITH DLD

Most studies documenting the grammar weakness of children with DLD have been conducted within the dialect of General American English (GAE). For example, GAE-speaking children with DLD have been shown to develop their tense systems at a later age and at a slower rate than their TD peers (Leonard, 2014; Leonard et al., 2017; Redmond et al., 2019; for a large longitudinal study, see Rice et al., 1998). In these studies, the tense morphemes measured frequently include: regular and irregular past tense (eg, jumped, ate), verbal -s (shows), auxiliary and copula forms of BE (eg, I am, she is, they are, he was, they were), and auxiliary forms of DO that carry overt tense marking (ie, did, does). At 5 years of age, when GAE-speaking TD children produce overt forms of these morphemes at least 90% of the time, children with DLD produce them less than 50% of the time (eg, Rice & Wexler, 1996). In the area of complex syntax, GAE-speaking children with DLD also demonstrate delays and difficulties understanding and producing utterances that contain clausal coordination, relative clauses, adverbial clauses, and complement clauses (Cahill et al., 2020; Owen & Leonard, 2006; Owen Van Horne & Lin, 2011; Schuele & Dykes, 2005; Scott & Balthazar, 2010; Steel et al., 2016). Specifically, in the production of complement clauses and compared to TD peers, the 4-year-old children with DLD described in Owen & Leonard (2006) showed lower grammatical accuracy and reduced use of the complementizer that; and the 6-year-old children with DLD in Australia reported by Steel et al. (2016) displayed a narrower range of matrix verbs (ie, verbs used in the main clause) and fewer grammatical complement clauses.

In dialects of English other than GAE, there is also growing evidence that children with DLD demonstrate difficulties with tense morphology and complex syntax when compared to same dialect-speaking TD peers. In studies focused on rural and urban dialects of southern African American English (AAE) and rural dialects of Southern White English (SWE), Oetting and colleagues have measured children’s productions of several morphemes marking tense, including regular and irregular past tense (eg, mowed, fell, mowØ, fallØ, falled, had fallØ, had fell, had falled), verbal -s (eg, she shows, showØ), and forms of auxiliary BE (eg, she is, she Ø; they are, they is, they Ø; he was, he Ø, they was, they were, they Ø), where Ø indicates a zero-marked (ie, phonetically silent) morpheme. Using the examples just provided, these form types in AAE and SWE can be described as dialect-general overt forms (eg, mowed), dialect-specific overt forms (they was walking), and zero forms (today he runØ). Given that AAE and SWE contain an expanded set of forms to mark tense relative to GAE, all 3 form types must be measured in child language studies (Oetting, 2025; Wynn Moland & Oetting, 2025). Repeatedly, results have shown that when an expanded set of dialect-appropriate tense morphemes are considered and scoring systems are appropriately tailored to AAE and SWE, those with DLD produce lower percentages of overt forms than their TD peers (eg, AAE: DLD 43% vs TD 71%; SWE: DLD 48% vs TD 91% as reported in Oetting et al., 2019; for review of several studies, see Oetting, 2024).

AAE- and SWE-speaking children with DLD have also been found to present difficulties with complex syntax. For example, in a study of language samples from 140 AAE- or SWE-speaking children, Oetting & Newkirk (2008) found that those with DLD produced a lower percentage of overt relative clause markers (eg, who, that) than those classified as TD (DLD 59% vs TD 86%). In another study of language samples from 246 AAE- or SWE-speaking children, Maleki and Oetting (2024) also found that those with DLD produced relatively fewer utterances with conjoined independent clauses than their TD peers (DLD 4% vs TD 7%). Arguably, the percentages of utterances with clausal coordination in this study were quite low (<10%), and utterances with conjoined independent clauses do not involve clausal subordination per se. Nevertheless, taken together these findings demonstrate that the syntactic deficits of children with DLD occur across dialects of English.

EXPLORING TENSE MORPHOLOGY IN CLINICIANS’ INPUT DURING COMPLEX SYNTAX INTERVENTION

Fortunately, research has established effective intervention strategies and programs targeting grammar (Ebbels, 2014; Ebbels et al., 2014; Ebbels & van der Lely, 2001; Fey et al., 2017; Rinaldi et al., 2021; Yoder et al., 2013). Relevant to the analysis conducted here, modeling and recasting are 2 intervention strategies that have yielded positive results (Choi-Tucci et al., 2025; Cleave et al., 2015). Modeling involves providing a target form to a child within an utterance, whereas recasting involves following a child’s utterance with one that corrects or builds upon the child’s utterance (Fey et al., 1999; Hassink & Leonard, 2010; Nelson et al., 1996). As an example of a therapeutic recast targeting complement clauses, a clinician could offer, “Yes, you think that the lion is hungry,” following a child’s utterance that contains simple syntax or ungrammatical syntax (eg, “I think hungry”).

Conversational recasting is a well-established technique that results in both morphological and syntactic benefits to children. For instance, in a study of 18 children, aged 4 to 5 years, Plante et al. (2014) showed that a conversational treatment incorporating recasts with 24 unique subject-verb combinations led to significant improvements in the children’s use of regular past tense, verbal -s, and auxiliary is (for an analysis of treatment effects comparing 6 different recast conditions, see Choi-Tucci et al., 2025). Owen Van Horne et al. (2023) also conducted a randomized controlled trial focused on modeling and recasting complement clauses embedded within science lessons. Their participants were 33 children with DLD, aged 4 to 7 years. Compared to the controls, those who received the intervention showed significant improvement from pre- to posttest on complement clause production probes.

Though previous research has established the effectiveness of intervention to improve children’s tense morphology or syntax ability, traditional guidelines suggest focusing on a single target (Tyler et al., 2003). Even in studies by Washington et al. (2011), Washington (2013)) that focused on both morphology and syntax, each component was treated separately. In the current study, we examined the frequency and type of tense morphemes produced by clinicians during an intervention for complement clauses. The goal of the analyses was to determine whether an intervention focused on complex syntax can also provide children with rich and repeated models of tense morphology. If it does, then we wanted to better understand how different tense morphemes distribute in the clinicians’ input by the dependency of the clause (ie, independent vs dependent) and matrix verb (eg, learn vs think) with an eye toward determining whether adequate variability is provided in this context for learning to be likely. Matrix verbs, such as the verb learned in the utterance, “We learned that air moves things,” are produced within the independent clauses of utterances. The tense morphemes associated with matrix verbs are important to study because it is the matrix verb that provides the need for clausal subordination. Critical to morpheme acquisition is high dose (Cleave et al., 2015) of variable input (Plante et al., 2014) and thus ensuring that a sufficient quantity and variety of inflected matrix and subordiante verbs are produced is an important first step.

THE ROLE OF RICH AND REPEATED MODELS OF LANGUAGE TARGETS

Intervention studies targeting grammar in children with DLD consistently indicate that learning is supported when children are exposed to frequent, repeated, and structurally informative models of the target forms (eg, Cleave et al., 2015; Justice et al., 2017; Plante et al., 2014; Smith-Lock et al., 2013). Frameworks emphasizing dose highlight the role of input frequency of a target as a key active ingredient of an intervention (Justice et al., 2017). In addition to frequency, evidence suggests the benefits of input richness, defined as exposure to targets across diverse lexical and structural contexts. As an example, Plante et al. (2014) found that children demonstrated stronger learning and greater generalization when target structures were modeled across a wide range of verbs and utterance frames compared to a less diverse treatment condition, and this occurred even after holding input frequency constant. Taken together, this work positions clinician input as a primary source of linguistic exemplars, with the frequency, distribution, and variability of target forms playing a central role in treatment effects.

At the same time, some researchers have questioned whether complex syntax in the input can provide appropriate models of tense morphemes because some utterances with subordinate clauses do not require tense morphemes within the dependent clause (eg, Fey et al., 2017; Leonard et al., 2024, 2015). Core to their concern are utterances with dependent clauses without overt complementizers or relativizers (eg, that, who, what, why, if) and without explicit subjects, because without these elements, tense morphemes are not always required. To illustrate, compare “We saw her running” to “We saw that she was running.” In the first utterance, running is a participle expressing aspect and not tense, whereas in the second utterance, the dependent clause contains an overt complementizer (ie, that) and an explicit subject (ie, she), and these elements provide a context for marking tense with an auxiliary.

Additionally, different matrix verbs license different tense morphemes, and even with the same matrix verb, there may be different opportunities for tense morphology depending on other aspects of the utterance. Consider the following 3 utterances: He wondered if she was walking vs She wonders if they sing vs They wonder if he will work; the first utterance includes 2 tense morphemes, the second includes 1 tense morpheme, and the third includes none. Examining clinician input by dependency of the clause (ie, independent vs dependent) and matrix verb offers critical insight into the nature of the grammatical evidence provided during intervention. This analytic focus directly informed the questions addressed in the current study:

1. What were the frequencies and types of tense morphemes produced by the clinicians?

2. Did the frequencies and types of tense morphemes produced by the clinicians vary by dependency of the clause (ie, independent vs dependent)?

3. What matrix verbs did the clinicians produce with tense morphemes?

METHOD

Data

The data came from the grammar arm of Hiebert et al. (2025), which was a teletherapy, randomized control trial using a parallel arm design with 3 arms: science only, science + vocabulary, and science + grammar. Although 32 children participated in the trial, the data analyzed here came from sessions with the 10 children assigned to the science + grammar arm. Families who were living in the US, had reliable access to the necessary technology for teletherapy, and had a child aged 4 to 7 years with speech or language difficulties, were recruited through social media, flyers, and referrals. Children with parent-reported diagnoses of autism, genetic syndromes affecting language, traumatic brain injury, and/or intellectual disability were excluded. Institutional review board approval, written parental consent, and children’s ongoing verbal assent were obtained prior to participation.

The participating children had not yet entered first grade, spoke English as their primary language (per the Multilingual Approach to Parent Language Estimates, MAPLE, questionnaire; Byers-Heinlein et al., 2020), and demonstrated language difficulties with a standard score below 85 on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation: Norm Reference (DELV-NR; Seymour et al., 2005). While children in the overall trial used various dialects, children in this arm spoke GAE per clinician report. All children had typical-range nonverbal IQs (T-score ≥35 on the Differential Ability Scales—II Matrices subtest; Elliott, 2007) and age-appropriate hearing (SoundScouts; Dillon et al., 2018; Mealings et al., 2020). Participants were also required to produce simple 3- to 5-word utterances with at least 50% intelligibility and limited accuracy (≤40%) on a 10-item probe of complement clauses. During the probe, clinicians presented scenarios using toys to elicit utterances with complement clauses. As an example, 1 item on the probe was as follows: Clinician says, “Lion wants to drink milk. He needs a cup. He put it away last night. But now he can’t find it. Lion talks to his friends and asks, ‘Where did I put my cup? I forgot!’” Following this scenario, the clinician asks, “What did the lion forget?”, and the anticipated child response was, “The lion forgot where he put his cup.”

The clinicians were 3 GAE-speaking female speech-language pathologists (2 holding MA degrees and 1 holding a PhD) who held certificates of clinical competence, with an average of 8.3 (SD = 4.16) years of clinical experience and experience with teletherapy. Their role in the study was to deliver the intervention. Prior to the start of the intervention, the clinicians were trained with practice participants to deliver all 3 arms (ie, science only, science + vocabulary, science + grammar). Children were placed into groups of 2 or 3 children and assigned to clinicians based on scheduling constraints, and then they were randomly assigned to 1 arm of the study (for details, see Hiebert et al., 2025).

Procedure

The science + grammar arm of the intervention targeted children’s use of complement clauses during science lessons focused on air, light, and sound. The clinicians’ utterances with complement clauses were designed to include an overt complementizer and an explicit subject (eg, “We learned that air is everywhere”). During each session, clinicians provided 5 recasts per child and offered each child 3 opportunities for elicited production. For instance, when prompted with, “What do you think will happen,” a child might respond, “It float,” and the clinician would recast the utterance as, “You thought that it would float.” Each small-group session also incorporated 35 to 40 modeled examples, a single chorally produced elicited imitation (ie, “Please repeat the sentence”), and 3 additional elicitation attempts emphasizing the inclusion of a main clause and a subordinate clause with the complementizer that (for additional details about the sessions, the at-home component of the intervention, and measures of treatment fidelity, see Hiebert et al., 2025).

Coding and analysis

The archival data for the grammar arm of the intervention study included an Excel file of the clinicians’ transcribed utterances from the 22 sessions that were used to examine treatment fidelity (approximately one-third of all sessions). As such, the file primarily contained the clinicians’ utterances when they included a model or recast or provided a prompt to a child for a complement clause during the intervention. Sessions generally lasted 30 to 45 minutes and concluded when both the science and the grammar intervention targets were met. Thus, the clinicians’ utterances came from roughly 15 hours of intervention (ie, mean session length: 40.72 min; SD = 7.15, 22 sessions transcribed). Utterances spoken during informal conversation were not included in the Excel file. Also, to ensure confidentiality of the participants’ identities, pseudonym initials used within the transcripts were replaced here with the generic phrase [child’s name].

Using the Excel file, the first and second author coded the clinicians’ utterances for the following tense morphemes: regular and irregular past tense (eg, wondered, thought), regular forms of verbal -s (eg, wonders, knows), copula and auxiliary forms of BE (eg, am, is, are, was, were), and auxiliary forms of DO (ie, does, did). Disagreements were resolved through discussion to ensure consistency.

RESULTS

Number and type of tense morphemes

A total of 1753 clinician utterances with complement clauses were identified within the transcripts. With roughly 15 hours of intervention, the clinicians produced complement clauses at a rate of ~1.9/minute. As shown in Table 1, within the coded clinicians’ utterances, they also produced 2491 tense morphemes, at a rate of ~2.78/min. Of these morphemes, the clinicians produced regular past tense morphemes the most frequently (n = 904). The next most frequently produced morpheme was verbal -s (n = 393), followed by irregular past tense (n = 327). Examples of utterances by the clinicians with these 3 types of morphemes underlined were: [Child’s name] expressed that he caught air in his bag, [Child’s name] asks what we are making and We knew that there was some air in here, respectively. As shown by these examples, the clinicians’ utterances with complement clauses often contained more than 1 tense morpheme. For example, in the first example utterance just presented, regular past tense was produced with the verb, expressed, and irregular past tense was produced with the verb caught.

Table 1.

Number of Tense Morphemes in Main and Complement Clauses

Morpheme	Main Clause	Complement Clause	Total
Regular past tense -ed	747	157	904
Irregular past tense	188	139	327
Verbal -s	181	212	393
Copula am	0	0	0
Copula is	5	274	279
Copula are	3	41	44
Copula was	0	51	51
Copula were	0	8	8
Auxiliary am	1	27	28
Auxiliary is	1	165	166
Auxiliary are	1	136	137
Auxiliary was	0	22	22
Auxiliary were	0	9	9
Auxiliary does	8	34	42
Auxiliary did	52	29	81
Total	1187	1304	2491

Note. The morphemes were coded in 1753 utterances provided by clinicians during the intervention sessions.

Copula and auxiliary BE forms also were produced by the clinicians, but their frequency distribution was uneven. The most common copula form was is, which appeared 279 times. By comparison, was (n = 51) and are (n = 44) were occasionally produced, were (n = 8) was rare, and am was not evident. Of the auxiliary BE forms, there also were frequency differences. Auxiliary is (n = 166) and are (n = 137) were produced most frequently, whereas am (n = 28), was (n = 22), and were (n = 9) were produced infrequently. Although the present progressive morpheme (eg, blowing) does not mark tense, it also was produced often (n = 343) as part of a verb phrase and following 94% of the auxiliary BE forms (total n = 362). Examples where there was not a one-to-one relationship between the clinicians’ production of an auxiliary BE form and a progressive included (1) utterances with gonna (eg, “He said that he is gonna get his mom”) and (2) utterances with coordinated verb phrases in which 2 verbs are produced with a progressive morpheme (eg, “He saw that the person is blowing and making wind with their mouth”). Finally, auxiliary DO was produced by the clinicians at a moderate level (ie, does, n = 42 and did, n = 81). Frequency differences among the various tense morphemes indicate that children received much more modeling of some morphemes compared to others, but as a set, the children were exposed to many tense morphemes as a by-product of the clinicians’ focus on utterances with complement clauses. It is worth noting that the exposure rate may have been even higher as only recasts and models containing complement clauses are analyzed here. Intervening utterances to regulate behavior or maintain the flow of conversation that did not include complement clauses were not included. Thus, other utterances produced by the clinicians during the sessions also likely included additional tense morphemes.

Tense morphemes by dependency of clause

As shown in Table 1, regular past tense was produced by the clinicians more often in independent clauses (n = 747) than in dependent clauses (n = 157). Examples of a regular past tense morpheme in each of these clause types were: You expressed that your rubber band is a little smaller than mine, and I remember that we learned about air. Irregular past tense was also observed in independent clauses (n = 188) more often than in dependent clauses (n = 139). Examples of irregular past tense morphemes in utterances within each of these clause types were: You heard that the sound maker sounds like a guitar, and [Child’s name] observed that my feather blew away. An opposite pattern occurred for verbal -s, as this morpheme was more frequently produced in dependent clauses (n = 212) than in independent clauses (n = 181). Examples included: [Child’s name] predicted that blowing bubbles makes wind and [Child’s name] knows that we are going to learn about science.

Patterns of use for DO paralleled those observed for regular and irregular past tense and present tense verbal -s morphemes, because use depended on whether the DO form expressed past, as in did, or present, as in does. Specifically, the clinicians produced did more often in independent clauses (n = 52) than in dependent clauses (n = 29) and does more often in dependent clauses (n = 34) than in independent clauses (n = 8). In contrast, the clinicians produced almost all their copula and auxiliary BE forms in dependent clauses, and this occurred regardless of whether the BE form expressed past or present tense. An utterance with a BE form in a dependent clause was, “We learned that eyes are light receivers.” While rare in frequency, an utterance with an auxiliary BE form in an independent clause was, “We are trying to guess how bubbles and the weather outside go together,” and an utterance with a copula BE form in an independent clause was, “We knew that there was some air in here, but it was still clear, right?” This latter utterance is interesting because it contains 2 copula was forms, the first in a dependent clause and the second in an independent clause that is conjoined to the first independent clause. Utterances with 2 independent clauses due to clausal coordination and utterances with 2 dependent clauses (eg, “And he knew the bag was full of air because it was really puffy”) were not common in the transcripts, but they further demonstrate the richness and repeated nature of tense morphology within the clinicians’ utterances during an intervention focused on modeling and recasting complement clauses.

Matrix verbs with tense morphemes

Matrix verbs are produced within the independent clauses of utterances, and dependent verbs are produced within dependent clauses. Thus, within the utterance, “We learned that eyes are light receivers,” learned is the matrix verb and are is the dependent verb. Matrix verbs are of interest here because without them, clausal subordination for a complement clause would not be required. As shown in Table 2, the clinicians produced 47 different matrix verbs with tense morphemes within their utterances. Of these, 10 different matrix verbs were associated with more than 50 tense morphemes. These 10 verbs were say, know, notice, express, share, remember, learn, report, observe, and guess. Know and remember as matrix verbs were produced with past tense (ie, know with irregular tense, n = 7 and remember with regular tense, n = 54), verbal -s (n = 71 and 17, respectively), and auxiliary did or does (n = 16 and 2, respectively). Others were produced with a more limited number and type of tense morphemes. For example, the matrix verb report was produced with regular past tense only (n = 68), and the matrix verb hope was produced with verbal -s only (n = 12).

Table 2.

List of Matrix Verbs in Utterances With Complement Clauses

Matrix Verb	Regular Past Tense	Irregular Past Tense	Verbal -s	Copula (Am/Is/Are)	Copula (Was/Were)	Aux (Am/Is/Are)	Aux (Was/Were)	Tense/Agreement Do (Does/Did)	Total
Say	0	114	2	0	0	0	0	3	119
Know	0	7	71	0	0	0	0	16	94
Notice	87	0	0	0	0	0	0	7	94
Express	76	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	77
Share	73	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	74
Remember	54	0	17	0	0	0	0	2	73
Learn	66	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	68
Report	68	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	68
Observe	63	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	66
Guess	62	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	63
Recall	24	0	21	0	0	0	0	2	47
See	2	33	4	0	0	0	0	7	46
Predict	40	0	5	0	0	0	0	0	45
Think	0	0	29	0	0	0	0	1	30
Hear	0	20	1	0	0	0	0	9	30
Suggest	28	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	29
Ask	27	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	27
Recognize	15	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	18
Hope	0	0	12	0	0	0	0	0	12
Identify	12	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	12
Suspect	0	0	8	0	0	0	0	2	10
Recommend	10	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	10
Imagine	5	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	9
Feel	0	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	8
Prove	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	8
Tell	0	5	1	0	0	0	0	1	7
Discover	7	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	7
Shout	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	5
State	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4
Hypothesize	1	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	3
Indicate	2	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	3
Whisper	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3
Advise	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2
Believe	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	2
Show	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
Explore	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1
Forgot	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
Mean	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	1
Request	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
Review	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1
Wonder	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Love	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Like	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Bet	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Decide	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Understand	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Watch	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total	747	188	181	0	0	3	0	60	1,179

Note. The total number of morphemes in the main clauses associated with matrix verbs (1,179) does not equal the number of complement clauses analyzed (1,753) as some were produced in the bare form (eg, with present plural subject, produced with DO).

Ten other matrix verbs were produced with 12 to 47 tense morphemes across utterances. Again, some were produced with several types of tense morphemes and others were produced with only 1 or 2 different types. In addition, 20 different matrix verbs were produced with 1 to 10 tense morphemes within the clinicians’ utterances. These verbs were not produced often enough to be marked by several different types of tense morphemes. Finally, 7 matrix verbs were produced without overt morphemes marking tense. These verbs were wonder, love, like, bet, decide, understand, and watch. A review of the utterances with these matrix verbs indicated that the verbs lacked overt tense marking because they were produced either as an imperative (eg, “Watch what I do”) or with present tense and a subject that does not obligate a verbal -s form in GAE. Examples included: I love how you raised your hand and We understand that sounds can have different volumes.

DISCUSSION

In the current study, we examined the frequency and type of tense morphemes produced by clinicians during 1 arm of a clinical trial focused on science concepts and complement clauses as a type of complex syntax. The intervention was administered to 10 children with DLD, and the data analyzed came from the clinicians’ utterances that were used to assess (and confirm) treatment fidelity of the clinicians’ models and recasts. The analyses were motivated by an understanding of 3 important findings from previous studies:

1. As early as first grade, complex syntax is critical for children to successfully engage in academic discourse and literacy.

2. Complex syntax involves command of both tense morphology and clausal subordination.

3. Across dialects of English, children with language impairments, including those with DLD, present weaknesses with both tense morphology and clausal subordination.

Given these findings from previous studies, the goal of the analyses was to determine if an intervention focused on complement clause also provides children with rich and repeated models of tense morphology. In addition, we wanted to better understand how different tense morphemes distribute in the clinicians’ input by dependency of the clause and matrix verb.

The results indicate that the clinicians who administered the intervention sessions produced many tense morphemes within their models and recasts in addition to many complement clauses. In fact, 1,753 utterances with complement clauses were produced (ie, roughly 80-110 times per hour), which contained 2,491 tense morphemes. Of the tense morphemes produced by the clinicians, past tense forms were most frequent, followed by verbal -s, and then copula BE, auxiliary BE, and auxiliary DO. When the tense morphemes were examined by clause type, similar frequencies of tense morphemes were produced in the clinicians’ independent and dependent clauses; however, past tense forms (ie, regular and irregular past tense and auxiliary did) were most often produced in the independent clauses and present tense forms (ie, verbal -s and auxiliary does) were most often produced in the dependent clauses. A different pattern of results was found for copula and auxiliary BE forms. Regardless of tense, the BE morphemes were produced by the clinicians primarily in the dependent clauses. Finally, of the 47 matrix verbs produced within the clinicians’ utterances, 40 were produced with tense morphology and 10 of these were each produced over 50 times.

These results indicate that complement clauses, and likely other types of subordinate clauses (eg, relative, adverbial) are an ideal intervention target that can provide children with many clinician models of both tense morphology and complex syntax. This information is important because previous research has documented the potential challenges clinicians face when delivering complex syntax interventions due to a lack of knowledge about complement clauses and other structures requiring clausal subordination (eg, Brimo & Melamed, 2017; Moats, 1994; Piasta et al., 2009).

Based on the current set of findings, clinicians new to this type of grammar intervention may want to consider treatment activities that allow them to model and recast utterances with past tense morphemes given that this tense was produced most frequently by the clinicians studied here. In addition, clinicians may want to plan their initial recasts and models using the 10 matrix verbs that were produced most often by the clinicians. These 10 verbs were say, know, notice, express, share, remember, learn, report, observe, and guess.

Finally, when thinking about treatment activities, clinicians may want to consider focusing on science concepts as was done in the current study, and use materials that generate models and recasts of utterances with subjects involving either third-person singular nouns and pronouns (eg, pencil, phone, girl, she) or mass nouns (eg, wind, air), because these subjects provide a context for several different types of tense morphemes, including verbal -s forms. We also recommend avoiding simple imperatives (eg, “Watch me do this,” “Shut the box,” “Pick up a pencil”), because these utterances do not provide an opportunity to model or recast a tense morpheme.

Recall that earlier we noted that some researchers have questioned whether complex syntax can provide adequate models of tense morphemes because some subordinate clauses do not require tense morphemes (eg, Fey et al., 2017; Leonard et al., 2024, 2015). However, in the current intervention study, the clinicians who provided the utterances studied here were trained to produce models and recasts with overt complementizers and explicit subjects, and these were shown within the analyses to provide subordinate clauses with many tense morphemes. Thus, another takeaway for clinicians is to produce an overt complementizer form and explicitly name the subject (using a noun or pronoun) when producing utterances with subordinate clauses to maximize the frequency and diversity of tense morphemes in their input.

Suggestions for children across dialects of English

Although the data for the current analysis came from clinicians and children who were diagnosed with DLD and who spoke GAE, it is important to consider how a clinician might implement this type of grammar intervention with children who speak a dialect that differs from GAE. We do this here focusing on AAE and SWE, as these are 2 dialects that allow an expanded range of dialect-appropriate forms to express grammatical functions. As noted earlier, the expanded range includes dialect-general overt forms (eg, reported, is blowing), dialect-specific overt forms (eg, they was blowing), and zero forms (eg, right now, the wind blowØ).

It is certainly true that there are important differences across dialects of English in how complementizers and tense morphemes are expressed, but clausal structure, clausal subordination, and expressions of tense are a property of all English dialects studied thus far.¹ Given this, for a clinician serving a child with DLD who speaks either GAE, AAE, and/or SWE, the focus should first be on making sure the child can produce utterances with diverse types of clausal structures and clausal subordination. Without clausal structure and clausal subordination, children are limited in their opportunities to produce a full variety of tense morphemes that are felicitous in their dialect(s). This recommendation aligns with the recast and modeling studies reviewed earlier and expands upon work by Hadley et al. (2018) who advocate for sentence frame diversity for young children whose tense systems are emerging. Within studies of sentence frame diversity, young children’s tense systems are best supported when input is clausal and includes several different types of grammatical subjects, verbs, and tense morphemes (for recommendations and review of several studies, see Hadley et al., 2018). Our paper is a first attempt at extending this integrated approach to clausal and morphological learning to older children.

In AAE and SWE, this would mean increasing the child’s use of utterances that have different matrix verbs, while also allowing dialect-appropriate overt forms and zero forms to serve as complementizers (eg, that, how, how, Ø). In other words, a treatment goal could be to use ~10 different matrix verbs within utterances containing complement clauses during activities focused on science concepts (or during any academic topic relevant to the child’s curricular activities). Once a child can produce utterances with complement clauses with diverse matrix verbs, a goal could then be to increase the child’s production of a diverse set of dialect-appropriate tense morphemes within these utterances. Key to this goal is again the focus on a diverse set of dialect-appropriate forms relative to same dialect-speaking TD peers. For AAE and SWE, this would mean crediting and supporting the child’s use of dialect-general overt forms (eg, remembered, knew, she knows, is, are, was, were, does, did), dialect-specific overt forms (eg, remembereded, knewed, knowed, had remember, had remembered, had knew, had know, they knows, I knows, they’s, they was), and zero forms (eg, rememberØ, knowØ, she Ø, they Ø) at relative frequencies reflective of same dialect-speaking TD children.

AAE- and SWE-speaking children who can produce several different types of tense morphemes within utterances with complement clauses would be viewed as demonstrating a linguistic strength compared to a child who produces zero forms only. For the child who produces zero forms only (ie, zero forms across all tense morpheme types, including past tense, verbal -s, copula and auxiliary BE, and auxiliary DO), a therapy goal would not be to reduce the zero forms (because these are dialect appropriate), but to add to the child’s linguistic repertoire dialect-general overt and dialect-specific overt morphemes along with linguistic flexibility to produce several different form types (eg, dialect-general overt, dialect-specific overt, zero). Linguistic flexibility is a feature of a mature linguistic system within all dialects of English.

For children with DLD within AAE, SWE, or any other dialect that exploits an expanded set of dialect-appropriate complementizer forms and tense forms, we also recommend modeling and recasting approaches. More studies are needed to test the benefits of different types of models and recasts for children with DLD across dialects of English; however, we recommend that the clinicians’ models and recasts again focus on adding complement clauses to children’s utterances first, and to also feel comfortable using dialect-general or dialect-specific overt forms within their utterances. As an example, and in response to an AAE- or SWE-speaking child with DLD who says, “Yesterday wind blowØ,” a clinician could recast with, “Yesterday we learned that wind blew air. You remembered!” This type of recast can be provided while also expecting and affirming the child’s use of a diverse set of dialect-appropriate forms (ie, dialect-general overt, dialect-specific overt, zero). In other words, following the clinicians’ recast, affirmation rather than an additional recast could be provided if the child produced an utterance with any additional linguistic elements (eg, “I learnØ that the wind blowØ,” “The wind blew,” “The wind blowed,” “I learned that the wind blew”). Affirmation here recognizes that the child altered their utterance using the recast, which shows linguistic flexibility.

For the dialects of AAE and SWE (and likely several other English dialects), it is appropriate for clinicians to recast and model using dialect-appropriate overt forms for grammatical elements, even when zero forms are also felicitous. This is because in AAE and SWE (and likely several other English dialects), overt forms of complementizers and tense are just as much a part of grammar as the zero forms. In both AAE and SWE, TD children produce overt tense morphemes, including regular and irregular past tense and copula and auxiliary forms of am, was, and were, far more often than zero forms in both informal conversation and formal school-based tasks (Oetting et al., 2019, 2022; for a review, see Oetting, 2024).

Finally, in some dialects of English, such as AAE, an overt form for regular past tense is more likely to be produced with verbs ending with a vowel, liquid, or glide than other verbs (Pruitt & Oetting, 2009; Rickford, 1999). Of the 47 matrix verbs produced within the clinicians’ utterances studied here, 8 verbs that take regular past tense marking end in a vowel, liquid, or glide. These verbs were: remember, discover, share, recall, wonder, identify, explore, and review. Clinicians who want to implement an intervention targeting both tense morphology and complement clauses with children who speak AAE, SWE, or any other dialect that allows zero past tense forms may want to consider using these 8 verbs within their models and recasts and/or explore whether these verbs within an intervention lead to more dialect-appropriate overt forms for regular past tense than others.

Limitations

As a secondary analysis of data collected and transcribed for research goals unrelated to the questions explored here, the current findings must be viewed as preliminary and exploratory. The analyses also focused on the clinicians’ utterances rather than the children’s utterances or the effect of the intervention on the children’s development of tense morphemes. Future studies are needed to explore these important topics. Recall that data came from 1 arm of a clinical trial that targeted children’s development of science concepts and complement clauses. In the future, treatment studies should be designed to measure children’s tense morphology and complex syntax at the same time. Future studies should also evaluate the relative importance of science concepts for generating clinician input with tense morphology and complement clauses compared to other topics. Analyses of data generated from in-person, one-on-one, or play-based interactions may also lead to different results than those presented here. Finally, the clinicians and children with DLD who contributed the data for the analysis spoke GAE, which is only one of the many dialects of English spoken in the US and elsewhere. Findings reported here and the recommendations offered to clinicians need to be tested empirically with clinicians and children who speak other dialects of English or languages other than English (see, eg, Castilla Earls & Owen Van Horne, 2023).

CONCLUSION

Based on the data analyzed here, interventions involving clinician modeling and recasting of complement clauses within utterances can expose children with language impairments to many tense morphemes in addition to complex syntactic structure. Of the tense morphemes produced by the clinicians, past tense was most frequent, especially within the main clauses of the clinicians’ utterances. Of the matrix verbs produced, 47 different verbs were produced, and of these, 40 were produced with tense morphemes, and 10 were each produced over 50 times. These findings can serve as a resource for clinicians interested in providing a similar type of grammar intervention to children with DLD who speak 1 or more of the many dialects of English.