One unstructured and two structured language sampling conditions were
compared to determine the ways in which different types of structure would
affect 2-year-olds' productions of the possessor + possession semantic
relation. In the unstructured, naturalistic condition, the clinician followed
the child's lead and responded in ways that would encourage the produc
tion of the possessive construction. In the structured conditions, the clinician
utilized wh-questions and sentence completion tasks to elicit the possessive
construction. While the subjects produced a greater quantity and diversity
of possessive constructions in the structured conditions, no differences
were observed between the two types of linguistic elicitation techniques.
Implications for sampling language with young children are discussed.
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