Syntax and Morphology in Danish-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The main difference between ICD-10 criteria for Childhood Autism and DSM-5 criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder is that the two first subcriteria of ICD-10, (a) deficits within social interaction, and (b) deficits within language and communication, have been collapsed into the first subcriterion of DSM-5: deficits within social-communication and social interaction. All children diagnosed with ICD-10 Childhood Autism in this study would qualify for a diagnosis of DSM-5 Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The similarities between Danish and English grammar made a relatively direct translation viable. The main morphological differences are that Danish does not have present progressive and third person marking, but does mark nouns for gender. As such, items testing present progressive and third person marking were removed. The publisher prohibited the inclusion of any additional items, so the CELF did not include items measuring gender marking on nouns; this marking is acquired very early. An additional difference is that Danish has no rules for copula contraction; thus, items testing this structure were also removed. The translated version thus measures nearly all the relevant Danish morphemes. As for syntactic differences between Danish and English, in some Danish sentences (e.g., those introduced by an adverbial phrase), the verb precedes the subject. In the subtest Sentence Structure, there were no cases of this “inverted” word order, and thus all translations were straightforward. Only one item was removed from Sentence Structure, due to semantic differences. Altogether, the translated version was thought to be useful for measuring morphosyntactic knowledge of Danish.