Harry N. Seymour

Professor Emeritus
Professor, Department of Communication Disorders
Adjunct Professor, Department of Linguistics
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003 USA

Interests

Dr. Seymour is currently an award-winning artist, who paints in a variety of media. Samples of his work can be viewed at his Art Website.

Professor Seymour's professional work is in the area of child language disorders. He has published many articles describing and identifying language disorders among African American children. Recent collaboration with Thomas Roeper and Jill de Villiers of Smith College has examined acquisition of Wh-movement in child Black English and bound variable knowledge among language disordered children. He has been co-P.I. with Roeper, Frazier and others on a Psycholinguistic Training Grant and on two training grants in the Department of Communication Disorders. He directed a 6-year NIH contract for the development of a dialect sensitive language assessment, which culminated in the publication of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation, Screening Test (DELV-ST) and DELV-Norm Referenced Edition (Seymour, Roeper & de Villiers, 2003; 2005), a standardized language assessment appropriate for all English-speaking children ages 4 through 9, including those who speak one of several dialects of English. More information about the test can be found at the website of the publisher, Harcourt Assessments, Inc. A comprehensive description of the rationale and development of the DELV tests can be found in Seminars in Speech and Language, Feb. 2004, volume 25 (1), edited by Seymour and Pearson.

Link to cv.

Selected Publications

=
"Black English and Standard American English Contrasts in Consonantal Development of Four- and Five-year old Children," with C. Seymour, Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 46, 3, 274-280 (1981).

= "Clinical intervention strategies for language disorders among nonstandard English speaking children," in O.L. Taylor (ed.), Communication Disorders in Linguistically Diverse Populations, College-Hill Press, San Diego (1986).

= "A minority perspective in diagnosis of child language disorders," with L. Bland, Clinics in Communication Disorders, 1, 1, (1991).

= "Speech and language assessment of preschool children," with T. Wyatt, in E.V. Nuttal, (ed.), Assessing and Screening Preschoolers, Allyn and Bacon, Inc., Boston, (1992).

= "The Place of Linguistic Theory in the Theory of Language Acquisition and Language Impairment," with T. Roeper in L. Levy (ed.), Crosslinguistic and crosspopulation contributions to theories of language acquisition, Erlbaum (in press).

= Seymour, H., Bland-Stewart, L., & Green, L. J. (1998). Difference versus deficit in child African-American English. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 29 , 96-108. (ASHA Editor's Award)

= Bland-Stewart, L. M., Seymour, H. N., Beeghly, M., & Frank, D.A. (1998). Semantic development in African American children prenatally exposed to cocaine. Seminars in Speech and Language . 19(2), 167-187.

= Benedicto, E., Abdulkarim, L., Garrett, D., Johnson, V., & Seymour, H. N. (1998). Overt copulas in African American English speaking children. In A. Greenhill, M. Hughes, H.Littlefield, & H. Walsh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development: Vol. 1 (pp. 50-57). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

= Wyatt, T. A. & Seymour, H. N. (1999). Assessing the speech and language skills in preschool children. In E. V. Nuttall, I. Romero, & J. Kalesnik (Eds.), Assessing and screening preschoolers : Psychological and educational dimensions. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

= Seymour, H. N., & Roeper, T. (1999). Grammatical acquisition of African American English. In O. Taylor & L. Leonard (Eds.), Speech and language in North America (pp. 109-153). San Diego CA: Singular Press.

= Seymour, H. N., Abdulkarim, L., & Johnson, V. (1999). The Ebonics controversy: An educational and clinical dilemma. Topics in Language Disorders, 19(4) , 66-77.

= Roeper, T., Ramos, E. Seymour, H.N. & Abdul-Karim, L. (2001). Language disorders as a window on a universal grammar: An abstract theory of agreement for IP, DP, and V-PP. Brain and Language , 77(3), 378-397.

Last updated 19 November, 2007 by bpearson@research.umass.edu

=	"Black English and Standard American English Contrasts in Consonantal Development of Four- and Five-year old Children," with C. Seymour, Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 46, 3, 274-280 (1981).
=	"Clinical intervention strategies for language disorders among nonstandard English speaking children," in O.L. Taylor (ed.), Communication Disorders in Linguistically Diverse Populations, College-Hill Press, San Diego (1986).
=	"A minority perspective in diagnosis of child language disorders," with L. Bland, Clinics in Communication Disorders, 1, 1, (1991).
=	"Speech and language assessment of preschool children," with T. Wyatt, in E.V. Nuttal, (ed.), Assessing and Screening Preschoolers, Allyn and Bacon, Inc., Boston, (1992).
=	"The Place of Linguistic Theory in the Theory of Language Acquisition and Language Impairment," with T. Roeper in L. Levy (ed.), Crosslinguistic and crosspopulation contributions to theories of language acquisition, Erlbaum (in press).
=	Seymour, H., Bland-Stewart, L., & Green, L. J. (1998). Difference versus deficit in child African-American English. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 29 , 96-108. (ASHA Editor's Award)
=	Bland-Stewart, L. M., Seymour, H. N., Beeghly, M., & Frank, D.A. (1998). Semantic development in African American children prenatally exposed to cocaine. Seminars in Speech and Language . 19(2), 167-187.
=	Benedicto, E., Abdulkarim, L., Garrett, D., Johnson, V., & Seymour, H. N. (1998). Overt copulas in African American English speaking children. In A. Greenhill, M. Hughes, H.Littlefield, & H. Walsh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development: Vol. 1 (pp. 50-57). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
=	Wyatt, T. A. & Seymour, H. N. (1999). Assessing the speech and language skills in preschool children. In E. V. Nuttall, I. Romero, & J. Kalesnik (Eds.), Assessing and screening preschoolers : Psychological and educational dimensions. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
=	Seymour, H. N., & Roeper, T. (1999). Grammatical acquisition of African American English. In O. Taylor & L. Leonard (Eds.), Speech and language in North America (pp. 109-153). San Diego CA: Singular Press.
=	Seymour, H. N., Abdulkarim, L., & Johnson, V. (1999). The Ebonics controversy: An educational and clinical dilemma. Topics in Language Disorders, 19(4) , 66-77.
=	Roeper, T., Ramos, E. Seymour, H.N. & Abdul-Karim, L. (2001). Language disorders as a window on a universal grammar: An abstract theory of agreement for IP, DP, and V-PP. Brain and Language , 77(3), 378-397.