ERIC Number: EJ1114974
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Oct
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0142-7237
EISSN: N/A
Composition of Estonian Infants' Expressive Lexicon According to the Adaptation of CDI/Words and Gestures
Schults, Astra; Tulviste, Tiia
First Language, v36 n5 p485-504 Oct 2016
The growth rate and the composition of expressive lexicon was studied in a sample of 903 infants between the age of 0;8 and 1;4 whose parents completed the Estonian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory-Words and Gestures. As expected, older children had on average larger vocabularies compared to younger children. At the age of 1;4 the Estonian infants' lexicon was smaller compared to the American-English children's lexicon but larger than Italian and British-English infants' vocabularies. The Estonian infants' expressive lexicon has the same proportional distribution of semantic categories that other languages have been shown to have. On average, Estonian girls have larger vocabularies compared to boys. There are also some differences between boys and girls regarding the content of most frequently produced words. Results provide additional information about the rate of lexicon learning and proportional distribution of semantic categories in a language with rich morphology.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Infants, Expressive Language, Child Language, Vocabulary Development, Language Skills, Measures (Individuals), Age Differences, Emergent Literacy, Semantics, Gender Differences, Morphology (Languages), Language Acquisition, Finno Ugric Languages, Multivariate Analysis
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Estonia
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A