Syntax Development in Boys and Girls

KOENIGSKNECHT, ROY A., and FRIEDMAN, PHILIP. Syntax Development in Boys and Girls. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 1109-1115. The Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) procedure was used to collect normative information about the syntax development of male and female children. Verbal samples in response to a variety of stimulus materials were collected from 20 male and 20 female normally developing children at 5 age levels (2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years). On several measures of sentence length and syntax maturity, girls averaged significantly higher scores than boys. Specific grammatical categories were also identified as important sex discriminators at different age levels. Significant female advantages began showing at the 4-year-old level, and became more evident with increasing age.