6 ROAR-Syntax Theoretical Background
6.1 Defining the Construct: Syntactic Knowledge
Syntactic knowledge — the ability to understand how words combine to form meaningful sentences—relies on implicit knowledge of grammatical structures (Tong and Deacon 2025; Van Dyke 2025). This ability allows a reader to recognize that in ‘The dog chased the cat,’ the dog is the actor performing the action and the cat is the recipient. It also allows the reader to recognize that ‘The cat was chased by the dog’ carries the same meaning but ‘The dog is chased by the cat’ holds a different meaning. Beyond word order, syntactic knowledge involves understanding auxiliary verbs (‘The dog chases’ vs. ‘The dog is chased’), prepositions (“The pencil is above the flower”), and subordinating words that signal clause relationships (‘The dog that was sleeping woke up’).
Syntactic knowledge develops progressively throughout childhood and adolescence, with students mastering increasingly complex structures from preschool through secondary school (Frizelle et al. 2025; Nippold 2004; Loban 1976; Tong, Yu, and Deacon 2024). A critical component of linguistic comprehension, syntactic ability contributes to reading comprehension outcomes alongside decoding skills (Catts, Adlof, and Weismer 2006). ROAR syntax provides educators and researchers with an efficient, developmentally sensitive measure to identify students who may benefit from targeted instruction and to monitor progress in syntactic knowledge development across elementary and secondary school years
6.2 Syntactic Knowledge
How syntax is measured matters significantly for understanding its relationship to reading comprehension. There are two different aspects of syntactic competence: syntactic knowledge (implicit, receptive understanding) and syntactic awareness (explicit, metalinguistic understanding). Brimo, Apel, and Fountain (2017) found that receptive, knowledge-based measures show stronger relationships to reading comprehension than measures of explicit syntactic awareness. This distinction is important because it clarifies what aspect of syntactic competence most directly supports reading comprehension development.
6.2.1 Measuring Syntactic Knowledge
Syntactic knowledge is typically measured through receptive comprehension tasks where students listen to sentences and demonstrate understanding through nonverbal responses. For example, subtests from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-5) (Wiig, Semel, and Secord 2013) such as Following Directions and Recalling Sentences require children to listen to sentences and either implement what is asked of them or recall and repeat sentences. These receptive measures assess implicit knowledge; children demonstrate understanding without explicitly analyzing or discussing grammatical rules.
6.2.2 Measuring Syntactic Awareness
In contrast, syntactic awareness is measured through tasks requiring explicit, metalinguistic judgment or manipulation. Examples include grammaticality judgment tasks (asking children if a sentence is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’), sentence correction tasks (asking children to fix ungrammatical sentences), and sentence reconstruction tasks (asking children to rearrange words to form a grammatical sentence). These tasks require children to think about and discuss grammatical rules consciously (Bowey 2005; Demont and Gombert 1996; Muter et al. 2004; Nation and Snowling 2000). Importantly, syntactic knowledge and syntactic awareness develop along somewhat different timelines and have different relationships to reading outcomes.
Because knowledge-based measures have the strongest direct relationship to reading comprehension (Brimo, Lund, and Sapp 2018), assessments designed to assess reading comprehension or identify students needing syntactic support should prioritize receptive, comprehension-based tasks over metalinguistic judgment or manipulation tasks. Such assessments capture the implicit grammatical understanding that students actually use when comprehending sentences—both in listening and in reading.
6.3 Syntactic Development: Progression from Simple to Complex
Children develop understanding of grammatical structures in a predictable sequence, progressing from simpler to more complex syntactic forms (Tong and Deacon 2025). This developmental progression reflects both linguistic properties of different structures and cognitive demands on developing comprehenders.
In the preschool and early elementary years, children first develop understanding of basic grammatical forms that are high-frequency and concrete in meaning. Simple sentence structures with canonical word order (subject-verb-object) such as ‘The boy ran’ or ‘The dog ate food’ are among the first understood. Early in development, children comprehend structures involving grammatical morphology such as plurals and past tense, as well as simple relationships marked by pronouns and coordinating words like ‘and’ (Tong and Deacon 2025).
Between ages 5 and 9, children show substantial growth in understanding three families of complex structures: relative clauses, complement clauses, and adverbial clauses (Tong and Deacon 2025). This period includes a developmental milestone at age 7, where children show particularly pronounced growth in syntactic abilities (Tong and Deacon 2025; Wonnacott et al. 2016). Research on children ages 7-11 demonstrates that younger children more readily make errors with syntactically ambiguous sentences and are slower to detect and correct these misinterpretations compared to older children (Joseph and Liversedge 2013).
Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)—a neurodevelopmental condition affecting approximately 10% of school-age children—show persistent difficulties with morphology and complex syntactic structures, even as vocabulary and phonological skills improve (Adlof and Hogan 2018; Hogan and Van Dyke 2025). Research demonstrates a strong relationship between receptive language comprehension and the complexity of expressive language in children with language disorders (Bishop 1979), yet only 20-30% of children with DLD are identified for support services (Adlof and Hogan 2018; Hogan and Van Dyke 2025). Early identification of syntactic knowledge difficulties is therefore essential, as without support, these challenges persist and significantly impact reading comprehension and academic outcomes.
Many syntactic features of English occur much more frequently in writing than in oral language, and are considered characteristic of academic language (Bailey 2007). For example, simple subject-verb-object sentences like ‘The boy kicked the ball’ are much more common in conversation than passive constructions like ‘The ball was kicked by the boy,’ where the actor comes second and word order no longer directly indicates who is performing the action (Celce-Murcia, Larsen-Freeman, and Williams 1983). Similarly, structures maintaining canonical word order are generally mastered before non-canonical arrangements such as object-relative clauses (‘The girl that the boy pushed fell’), where word order does not directly reveal thematic roles and requires more complex integration of grammatical information (Nippold 2004).
Later in elementary school and beyond, students continue developing comprehension of advanced syntactic structures including complex passive constructions, embedded clauses, multiple levels of subordination, and sophisticated verb phrases with auxiliaries and modals (Nippold 2004). Students require exposure to academic language to develop understanding of these advanced structures, which are not commonly used in everyday speech (Bailey 2007). The syntactic knowledge developed during ages 5-9 provides the basis for this continued growth.
6.4 The Role of Syntax in Reading Comprehension
Understanding this developmental progression is important because syntactic knowledge plays a well-established role in reading outcomes. The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer 1986; Hoover and Gough 1990) proposes that reading comprehension is the product of two essential components: word recognition (the ability to decode written words) and linguistic comprehension (the ability to understand spoken language). Linguistic comprehension encompasses multiple language skills, including syntax, vocabulary, and other language components, with syntax serving as a critical foundation for understanding how words work together to create meaning. As contemporary models of reading suggest, these effects operate through multiple pathways (Perfetti and Stafura 2013; Kim 2020), with syntactic knowledge supporting reading both directly through sentence comprehension and indirectly through vocabulary development (Tong, Yu, and Deacon 2024).
When students read, they must do more than accurately decode individual words—they must understand how those words work together to convey meaning. Complex sentences with multiple clauses, passive voice structures, or long noun phrases with multiple modifiers create particular comprehension demands. Research has consistently demonstrated that students with difficulties in syntactic knowledge show corresponding difficulties in reading comprehension, even when their word-reading skills are adequate (Scott 2004; Catts, Adlof, and Weismer 2006). Conversely, strong syntactic knowledge supports reading comprehension by allowing readers to quickly and accurately parse sentence structure, predict upcoming information, and integrate meaning across sentences—the two pathways outlined in the Linguistic Pathways Model (Tong, Yu, and Deacon 2024). At the word-by-word level, readers apply the Minimal Attachment principle, building the simplest syntactic structure until additional information requires reanalysis (Frazier 2016). Understanding how syntactic parsing and semantic interpretation interact is fundamental to comprehending how syntax supports meaning construction (Staub 2015).
6.4.1 Empirical Evidence for the Syntax-Comprehension Relationship
A comprehensive meta-analysis of 86 studies examining over 14,000 readers found a large overall correlation between syntactic knowledge and reading comprehension (Zheng et al. 2023). Critically, this relationship strengthens across development: effect sizes increase from moderate in early elementary grades to large by secondary school and university, indicating that syntactic knowledge becomes increasingly important as readers encounter more complex texts. This pattern holds consistently across different languages and writing systems (Chinese, Dutch, English, French), suggesting that the role of syntactic knowledge in reading comprehension reflects fundamental principles of how readers process written language (Tong, Yu, and Deacon 2024).
Additionally, Cain (2007) found that the relationship between syntactic ability and reading comprehension is mediated through multiple language pathways, including vocabulary knowledge and memory, indicating that syntax does not operate in isolation but as part of an integrated language system. This integrated perspective– in which syntactic knowledge works in concert with vocabulary, prior knowledge, and other language and cognitive skills—is fundamental to understanding how syntactic knowledge supports reading development.
Furthermore, research emphasizes the importance of sentence-level comprehension for successful reading. As students progress through the grades and encounter increasingly complex academic texts, sentence complexity becomes a significant factor in comprehension difficulty (Scott 2004; MacKay, Conrad, and Deacon 2021). Students who struggle with complex syntactic structures in their listening comprehension often have difficulty understanding these same structures when reading, limiting their access to grade-level academic content. This connection between listening comprehension of syntax and reading comprehension of syntax underscores the value of assessing receptive syntactic knowledge.