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dc.rights.licenseCC-BY-NC-ND
dc.contributor.advisorBoerma, T.D.
dc.contributor.authorKort, P.
dc.date.accessioned2020-06-03T18:00:11Z
dc.date.available2020-06-03T18:00:11Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.identifier.urihttps://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/35895
dc.description.abstractSchizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD) is a mental disorder that affects language, communication and thought. The present study researches syntactic complexity, one of the affected aspects of language in SSD. Earlier research has found that SSD patients use simpler syntactic structures than healthy individuals do. Simple syntactic structures consist of a main clause and no embedded clauses. Complex sentences consist of a main clause and one or more embedded clauses. The aim of the present study was to find out in what way the syntactic complexity differs in SSD patients and healthy individuals and to give a more detailed picture of this simplification. There are different types of embedded clauses, with different levels of complexity. Earlier research does not account for this. The data for this study was from the PRAAT study at UMC Utrecht. It consisted of transcriptions of semi-structured interviews that were conducted on SSD participants and healthy controls. To measure syntactic complexity, the individual utterances in these transcriptions were manually rated with the use of Covington et al.’s D-Level scale (2006). This is an acquisition-based scale, based on the order in which children acquire complex syntactic structures. The later a structure is acquired, the more complex it is. For the present study, the scale was adjusted to fit more to the data of the present study by adding Dutch example sentences and by adding a level to account for one-word utterances. It was found that SSD participants used more simple syntactic structures than complex ones. They also used more simple syntactic structures than the control group did. So there was less complexity in SSD patients’ utterances, which is in line with findings from earlier research. The method in the present study could not account for the specific complex structures the participants used in sentences with more than one level of embedding. Therefore, it was not found whether the complex sentences with multiple embedded clauses in the SSD participants’ speech were less complex than those of the control group. Future research in which different types of embedding in a complex sentence is individually measured was proposed.
dc.description.sponsorshipUtrecht University
dc.format.extent343188
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.language.isoen
dc.titleSYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY IN SCHIZOPHRENIA SPECTRUM DISORDER
dc.type.contentBachelor Thesis
dc.rights.accessrightsOpen Access
dc.subject.keywordsSchizophrenia Spectrum Disorder, Syntactic Complexity
dc.subject.courseuuTaalwetenschap


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