<![CDATA[Background: Language acquisition is a series of processes through which children naturally acquire and develop language while learning their first language, progressing through several stages from babbling to full fluency. Language consists of several components, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Syntactic ability is a fundamental aspect of child language development, reflecting an individual’s capacity to organize words into meaningful and grammatically appropriate sentence structures. The preschool period is a sensitive developmental stage during which syntactic skills rapidly develop through social interaction, play, and linguistic stimulation from both family and early educational environments. Objectives: This study aimed to analyze the syntactic performance of preschool-aged children using the NSST instrument. Methods: This study employed a quantitative, descriptive-analytic cross-sectional design to describe the profile of syntactic abilities among preschool children. The study used a single variable: the syntactic performance of preschool-aged children. Results: The findings showed that the highest Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) score was 4.84, the lowest was 0.89, and the average MLU score was 3.25. One-word utterances consisted of Subject (S) patterns in 58 occurrences (5.34%), Predicate (P) patterns in 84 occurrences (7.73%), Object (O) patterns in 25 occurrences (2.30%), and Adverbial/Complement (K) patterns in 34 occurrences (3.13%). Phrase-level utterances (two-word combinations) consisted of S–P patterns in 152 occurrences (14.00%), S–K in 74 (6.81%), S–O in 8 (0.74%), P–O in 124 (11.42%), P–K in 24 (2.21%), O–P in 1 (0.09%), and O–K in 1 (0.09%). Sentence-level syntactic structures included S–P–O in 385 occurrences (35.45%), S–P–K in 57 (5.25%), S–O–P in 3 (0.28%), S–K–O in 9 (0.83%), P–O–S in 2 (0.18%), P–S–O in 1 (0.09%), P–O–K in 8 (0.74%), S–P–O–K in 34 (3.13%), S–P–K–O in 1 (0.09%), and S–K–P–O in 1 (0.09%). Overall, the syntactic performance of the 30 participants was dominated by S–P–O patterns (35.45%), followed by S–P (14.00%) and P–O (11.42%). Conclusion: The analysis of syntactic patterns demonstrated that preschool children could produce a variety of utterance forms, ranging from single-word utterances to complex sentences. The predominance of Subject–Predicate–Object (SPO) structures and simple declarative sentences indicates that most children had developed the ability to construct relatively complete sentences to express ideas, needs, and experiences. These findings suggest that utterance length and syntactic complexity develop concurrently as part of children’s language development. Keywords: Language Acquisition, Syntax, Preschool Children, Linguistics, Sentence Analysis.]]>
