DELV Relaunch

From Tom Roeper

The Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV) was developed by a cooperative team from the Linguistics Department and Communications Disorders Dept in 2005.  It is now being relaunched with a new publisher: Ventris. https://www.ventrislearning.com/delv/

This disorders test is designed to probe deep principles of grammar (long-distance wh-movement, wh-pairing, quantification, pragmatics, etc) without being biased against dialect speakers, particularly AAE speakers.

The DELV has been used with Navajo, Appalachian, Canadian, Australian children, and translated into Afrikaans.   Ideas
of further extensions, possible translations and potential applications are all welcome.

The DELV included many faculty from linguistics, beyond the authors Harry Seymour, Tom Roeper, and Jill deVilliers (to whom Peter deVilliers and Barbara Pearson have been added): Lisa Green, Lisa Selkirk, Peggy Speas, Angelika Kratzer, Joe Pater, and John Kingston were all involved in major and minor ways.  In addition many students were involved: Bart Hollebrandse, Mike Dickey, Elena Benedicto, Deanna Moore (and I hope I have not forgotten anyone).

      The original team met November 15th at the ASHA (American Speech and Hearing Association—20,000 attendees) for a wonderful re-union and brainstorming session with Robert Ventris our new publisher.
      Many of the ComDis PhD’s joined us including: Valerie Johnson [starting a new comdis program at Rutgers], D’Jaris Coles (Andrews University), Eliane Ramos (FIU), Janice Jackson, and former ComDis faculty Shelley Velleman (now chair at U of Vermont) and Christine Foreman.
     Presentations by Jill deVilliers, on new tests (Chinese,
Roma,and  Spanish) were presented. AAE and word-learning, and a variety of other subjects were given in lectures and posters.