The objective of this research is to verify the language of children with Down syndrome concerning lexical, syntactic and semantic aspects using MLU. The hypothesis is that children with Down syndrome will present low performance, regarding not only the quantitative measures as MLU-m, MLU-w, GM-1 and GM-2, but also regarding the qualitative aspects of their production, when compared to children with typical development.

One of the alternatives to observe and assess language development and language disorders is to analyze spontaneous language samples, which allos the identification of qualitative and quantitative aspects. The analysis involves the MLU-morphemes, MLU-words and words classes. All words produced are analyzed, including interjections, adverbs and adjectives.Word classes with grammatical characteristics present lower averages, as prepositions and conjunctions. Reference parameters are the ones of the spoken language. The objective assessment with qualitative and quantitative data may help the speech and language pathologist/therapist to determine therapeutic guidelines to each patient.

Inclusion Criteria:

• genetic diagnosis of Down syndrome
• good health conditions
• normal results on audiologic evaluation
• pediatric and ear, nose and throat periodic check ups.
• attend speech-language therapy at the Speech Language Pathology Laboratory in Syndromes and Sensorimotor Deficits (SLPL-SSD) of the School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo.

Exclusion Criteria:

• submission to long term hospitalizations due to heart diseases and major respiratory airway infections, that may interfere in the child's global development
• presence of visual or auditory important deficits

60 children with Down syndrome aged from 3 to 10 years