Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T23:10:50.910Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Elizabeth Bates ,
Virginia Marchman ,
Donna Thal ,
Larry Fenson ,
Philip Dale ,
J. Steven Reznick ,
Judy Reilly  and
Jeff Hartung
Elizabeth Bates*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Virginia Marchman
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Donna Thal
Affiliation:
San Diego State Universityand University of California, San Diego
Larry Fenson
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Philip Dale
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Seattle
J. Steven Reznick
Affiliation:
Yale University
Judy Reilly
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Jeff Hartung
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
*
[*] Address for correspondence: Center for Research in Language, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093-0526, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Results are reported for stylistic and developmental aspects of vocabulary composition for 1, 803 children and families who participated in the tri-city norming of a new parental report instrument, the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. We replicate previous studies with small samples showing extensive variation in use of common nouns between age o;8 and 1;4 (i.e. ‘referential style’), and in the proportion of vocabulary made up of closed-class words between 1;4 and 2;6 (i.e. ‘analytic’ vs. ‘holistic’ style). However, both style dimensions are confounded with developmental changes in the composition of the lexicon, including three ‘waves’ of reorganization: (1) an initial increase in percentage of common nouns from 0 to 100 words, followed by a proportional decrease; (2) a slow linear increase in verbs and other predicates, with the greatest gains taking place between 100 and 400 words; (3) no proportional development at all in the use of closed-class vocabulary between 0 and 400 words, followed by a sharp increase from 400 to 680 words. When developmental changes in noun use are controlled, referential-style measures do not show the association with developmental precocity reported in previous studies, although these scores are related to maternal education. By contrast, when developmental changes in grammatical function word use are controlled, high closed-class scores are associated with a slower rate of development. We suggest that younger children may have less perceptual acuity and/or shorter memory spans than older children with the same vocabulary size. As a result, the younger children may ignore unstressed function words until a later point in development while the older children tend to reproduce perceptual details that they do not yet understand. Longitudinal data show that early use of function words (under 400 words) is not related to grammatical levels after the 4OO-word point, confirming our ‘stylistic’ interpretation of early closed-class usage. We close with recommendations for the unconfounding of stylistic and developmental variance in research on individual differences in language development, and provide look-up tables that will permit other investigators to pull these aspects apart.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , February 1994 , pp. 85 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bates, E., Bretherton, I. & Snyder, L. (1988). From first words to grammar: individual differences and dissociable mechanisms. New York: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Bates, E. & Carnevale, G. F. (in press). New directions in research on language development. Developmental Review.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Caselli, M. C. & Casadio, P. (1990). A crosslinguistic study of early lexical development using parental report. In Rovee-Collier, C. (ed.), Abstracts of the Seventh International Conference on Infant Studies. Special issue of Infant Behavior and Development 13, 258. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Bates, E. & Thal, D. (1991). Associations and dissociations in language development. In Miller, J. (ed.), Research on child language disorders: a decade of progress. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Thal, D. & Marchman, V. (1991). Symbols and syntax: a Darwinian approach to language development. In Krasnegor, N., Rumbaugh, D., Schiefelbusch, R. & Studdert-Kennedy, M. (eds), Biological and behavioral determinants of language development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bloom, L. (1991). Language development from two to three. New York: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Bloom, L., Lightbown, L. & Hood, L. (1975). Structure and variation in child language. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 40, Serial No. 160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: the early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camaioni, L., Caselli, M. C., Longobardi, E. & Volterra, V. (1991). A parent report instrument for early language assessment. First Language 11, 345–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caselli, M. C. & Casadio, P. (1992). Fondazione MacArthur: lo sviluppo comunicativo nella prima infanzia. Rome: Istituto di Psicologia, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.Google Scholar
Dale, P. S. (1991). The validity of a parent report measure of vocabulary and syntax at 24 months. Journal of Speech and Hearing Sciences 34, 565–71.Google ScholarPubMed
Dale, P., Bates, E., Reznick, S. & Morisset, C. (1989). The validity of a parent report instrument of child language at 20 months. Journal of Child Language 16, 239–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, W. & Shore, C. (1991). A confirmatory factor analysis of language style. Paper presented at the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA.Google Scholar
Dixon, W. & Shore, C. (1992). Confirming linguistic styles. Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Miami Beach, FL.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, J. S., Thai, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J., Pethick, S. & Reilly, J. (1993). The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: user's guide and technical manual. San Diego: Singular Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. & Farwell, C. B. (1975). Words and sounds in early language acquisition. Language 51, 419–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gesell, A. (1925). The mental growth of the preschool child: a psychological outline of normal development from birth to the sixth year, including a system of developmental diagnosis. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Goldfield, B. & Snow, C. (1985). Individual differences in language acquisition. In Gleason, J. (ed.), Language development. Columbus, OH: Merrill.Google Scholar
Gopnik, A. & Choi, S. (1990). Do linguistic differences lead to cognitive differences? A cross-linguistic study of semantic and cognitive development. First Language 10, 199–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hampson, J. & Nelson, K. (1993). Relation of maternal language to variation in rate and style of language acquisition. Journal of Child Language 20, 313–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hollingshead, A. (1965). Two-factor index of social position. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Jackson-Maldonado, D., Thal, D., Marchman, V., Bates, E. & Gutierrez-Clellen, V. (1993). Early lexical development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers. Journal of Child Language 20, 523–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieven, E. & Pine, J. M. (1990). Review of E. Bates, I. Bretherton & L. J. Snyder, From first words to grammar: individual differences and dissociable mechanisms. In Journal of Child Language 17, 495–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1991). The CHILDES project: tools for analyzing talk. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Marchman, V. & Bates, E. (1994). Continuity in lexical and morphological development: a test of the critical mass hypothesis. Journal of Child Language (in press).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, K. E. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 38. (1–2, Serial No. 149).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. E. (1981). Individual differences in language development: implications for development and language. Developmental Psychology 17, 170–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogura, T., Yamashita, Y., Murase, T. & Dale, P. (1992). Some preliminary findings from the Japanese Early Communicative Development Inventory. Unpublished abstract, Shimane University.Google Scholar
O'Hanlon, L., Washkevich, D. & Thal, D. (1991). MacArthur Communicative Inventory-Toddlers: validation for language-impaired children. Poster presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Atlanta.Google Scholar
Peters, A. (1977). Language-learning strategies: does the whole equal the sum of the parts? Language 53, 560–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pine, J. M. & Lieven, E. (1990). Referential style at 13 months: why age-defined crosssectional measures are inappropriate for the study of strategy differences in early language development. Journal of Child Language 17, 625–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plunkett, K. (1993). Lexical segmentation and vocabulary growth in early language acquisition. Journal of Child Language 20, 43–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Plunkett, K. & Marchman, V. (1993). From rote learning to system building: acquiring verb morphology in children and connectionist nets. Cognition 48, 21–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reilly, J., Provine, K., Anderson, D. & Bellugi, U. (1992). Does modality influence lexical development? Parent report data on the emergence of American Sign Language. Unpublished abstract, San Diego State University.Google Scholar
Snyder, L., Bates, E. & Bretherton, I. (1981). Content and context in early lexical development. Journal of Child Language 8, 565–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thal, D. & Bates, E. (1990). Continuity and variation in language development. In Colombo, J. & Fagen, J. (eds), Individual differences in infancy: reliability, stability, prediction. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Van Geert, P. (1991). A dynamic systems model of cognitive and language growth. Psychological Review 98, 3–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vihman, M. (1986). Individual differences in babbling and early speech: predicting to age three. In Lindblom, B. & Zetterstrom, R. (eds), Precursors of early speech. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Vihman, M., Ferguson, C. & Elbert, M. (1986). Phonological development from babbling to speech: common tendencies and individual differences. Applied Psycholinguistics 7, 3–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vihman, M. & Greenlee, M. (1987). Individual differences in phonological development: age one and age three. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 30, 503–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vihman, M. & Miller, R. (1988). Words and babble at the threshold of language acquisition. In Smith, M. D. & Locke, J. L. (eds), The emergent lexicon. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar