Early lexical development: comprehension and production

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Benedict
Keyword(s):  
Word Class ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
Lexical Development ◽  
Word Acquisition ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Production Development ◽  
Comprehension Development

ABSTRACTLists of the first 50 words comprehended and produced by eight infants between 0; 9 and 1; 8 were compared. Comprehension development began earlier (around 0; 9) and reached the 50-word level (age 1; 1) earlier than production development (ages 1; 0 and 1; 6 respectively) and rate of word acquisition for comprehension was twice that of production, confirming the hypothesis that comprehension precedes production for lexical development. Word-class analysis revealed differences in the proportion and type of action words in comprehension and production vocabularies. It is suggested that action is central to lexical development but is expressed differently in comprehension, where action words are used to initiate actions, and production, where non-action words accompany the child's actions.

scholarly journals Lexical development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramona Kunene Nicolas ◽  
Saaliha Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Production Performance ◽  
Lexical Development ◽  
Production Development ◽  
African Context ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Linguistic Categories ◽  
Vocabulary Assessment

This study seeks to investigate the development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu-speaking children between the ages of 25 and 36 months. It compares lexical comprehension and production in isiZulu, using an Italian developed and validated vocabulary assessment tool: The Picture Naming Game (PiNG) developed by Bello, Giannantoni, Pettenati, Stefanini and Caselli (2012). The PiNG tool includes four subtests, one each for subnoun comprehension (NC), noun production (NP), predicate comprehension (PC), and predicate production (PP). Children are shown these lexical items and then asked to show comprehension and produce certain lexical items. After adaptation into the South African context, the adapted version of PiNG was used to directly assess the lexical development of isiZulu with the three main objectives to (1) test the efficiency of the adaptation of a vocabulary tool to measure isiZulu comprehension and production development, (2) test previous findings done in many cross-linguistic comparisons that have found that both comprehension and production performance increase with age for a lesser-studied language, and (3) present our findings around the comprehension and production of the linguistic categories of nouns and predicates. An analysis of the results reported in this study show an age effect throughout the entire sample. Across all the age groups, the comprehension of the noun and predicate subtests was better performed than the production of noun and predicate subtests. With regard to lexical items, the responses of children showed an influence of various factors, including the late acquisition of items, possible problems with stimuli presented to them, and the possible input received by the children from their home environment.

scholarly journals Determinants of early lexical acquisition: Effects of word- and child-level factors on Dutch children's acquisition of words

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Josje VERHAGEN ◽  
Mees VAN STIPHOUT ◽  
Elma BLOM
Keyword(s):  
Word Length ◽  
Short Form ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Neighborhood Density ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Lexical Acquisition ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Dutch Children

Abstract Previous research on the effects of word-level factors on lexical acquisition has shown that frequency and concreteness are most important. Here, we investigate CDI data from 1,030 Dutch children, collected with the short form of the Dutch CDI, to address (i) how word-level factors predict lexical acquisition, once child-level factors are controlled, (ii) whether effects of these word-level factors vary with word class and age, and (iii) whether any interactions with age are due to differences in receptive vocabulary. Mixed-effects regressions yielded effects of frequency and concreteness, but not of word class and phonological factors (e.g., word length, neighborhood density). The effect of frequency was stronger for nouns than predicates. The effects of frequency and concreteness decreased with age, and were not explained by differences in vocabulary knowledge. These findings extend earlier results to Dutch, and indicate that effects of age are not due to increases in vocabulary knowledge.

Phrasal Construction Tonology

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 649-689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otelemate G. Harry ◽  
Larry M. Hyman
Keyword(s):  
Word Class ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Tonal Patterns

Although it is common for “replacive” tonal patterns to be assigned by word-level morphological constructions, it is far less common for such overriding schemas to be assigned by specific phrase-level syntactic constructions. Kalabari, an Ijo language of Nigeria, does exactly this: Whenever the noun is preceded by a modifier, it loses its tones and receives different “melodies” depending on the constructional word class of the preceding specifier/modifier, either /HL/, /HLH/, /LH/, or /L/. In this paper, we first document the assignment of these different syntactic melodies and then provide evidence for how they developed diachronically. We then present a brief survey of other linguistic phenomena which partially resemble the Kalabari system, but conclude that tone is the only phrasal phonological property that can be assigned by construction from word to word.

What makes a word easy to acquire? The effects of word class, frequency, imageability and phonological neighbourhood density on lexical development

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pernille Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Robust Regression ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Lexical Database ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Lexical Development ◽  
Communicative Development ◽  
Class Frequency ◽  
Lexical Effects ◽  
The Individual

This article analyses how a set of psycholinguistic factors may account for children’s lexical development. Age of acquisition is compared to a measure of lexical development based on vocabulary size rather than age, and robust regression models are used to assess the individual and joint effects of word class, frequency, imageability and phonological neighbourhood density on Norwegian children’s early lexical development. The Norwegian Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) norms were used to calculate each CDI word’s age of acquisition and vocabulary size of acquisition. Lexical properties were downloaded from the lexical database Norwegian Words, supplemented with data on frequency in adult and child-directed speech. Age of acquisition correlated highly with vocabulary size of acquisition, but the new measure was more evenly distributed and more sensitive to lexical effects. Frequency in child-directed speech was the most important predictor of lexical development, followed by imageability, which seems to account for the dominance of nominals over predicates in Norwegian.

scholarly journals Mundari and argumentation in word-class analysis

2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Evans ◽  
Toshiki Osada
Keyword(s):  
Word Class ◽  
Class Analysis

Word class effect in online processing of proverbs: A reaction-time study

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-196
Author(s):  
Lückert Claudia
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
American English ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Distributional Analysis ◽  
Time Study ◽  
Class Effect ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Processing Demands ◽  
Word Classes

Abstract Proverbs (as Easy come, easy go) are a type of conventionalized multiword unit that can be used as separate, complete statements in speech or writing (Mieder 2007; Steyer 2015). The rationale of this study is to examine word class effects in online processing of proverbs. In Lückert and Boland (submitted), we reported facilitative effects associated with proverb keywords which suggests that word-level properties are active alongside properties of the level of the multiword unit. Previous research has shown that individual word classes have different effects in online language processing. Numerous studies revealed that verbs are processed more slowly (Cordier et al. 2013) and involve greater processing demands compared to nouns (Macoir et al. 2019). The results of the present study suggest that verbs rather than nouns facilitate proverb processing. A distributional analysis of word classes in proverb corpora implies a trend to prefer verbs over nouns in American English proverbs.

Vocal Communications of a Developmentally Delayed Child

1987 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-130
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Romski ◽  
Sharon Ellis Joyner ◽  
Rose A. Sevcik
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Developmental Delays ◽  
Developmentally Delayed ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Diary Data ◽  
Word Acquisition ◽  
Diary Studies ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Vocal Communications ◽  
Impaired Children

Studies of first-word acquisition in typical language-learning children frequently take the form of diary studies. Comparable diary data from language-impaired children with developmental delays, however, are not currently available. This report describes the spontaneous vocalizations of a child with a developmental delay for 14 months, from the time he was age 6:5 to age 7:7. From a corpus of 285 utterances, 47 phonetic forms were identified and categorized. Analysis focused on semantic, communicative, and phonological usage patterns.

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