Parents’ reports of lexical and grammatical aspects of toddlers’ language in European Portuguese: Developmental trends, age and gender differences

Abstract

The results from a large-scale study on toddlers’ language acquisition in European Portuguese are presented. Toddlers’ lexical and grammatical competencies were assessed using the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences. The results, based on 3012 reports completed by parents, indicate an increase in the lexical size and on five measures of grammatical development (production of regular morphology, irregular morphology, over-regularizations, mean length of utterances and sentence complexity) across age groups. A main effect of gender was found for lexical size, production of regular and irregular morphology, production of over-regularizations and sentence complexity, with girls obtaining overall higher scores than boys. All lexical and grammatical development measures are positively correlated, even after controlling for age and gender effects. These findings are discussed in terms of their consistency with those obtained for other languages.

The development of vocabulary and grammar: a longitudinal study of European Portuguese-speaking toddlers

“…Gender is among the most studied variables. Gender differences have been found in the mean number of words produced in several studies in different languages involving toddlers under the age of 2;6 (Bleses et al, 2008;Eriksson et al, 2011;Feldman et al, 2005;Jackson-Maldonado et al, 2003;Pérez-Pereira & Soto, 2003;Reese & Read, 2000;Silva et al, 2017;Trudeau & Sutton, 2011). According to these studies, girls produce significantly more words than boys.…”

Early lexical development: Do day care attendance and maternal education matter?

“…The data used in this study were retrieved from the databases of the adaptation study of the European Portuguese version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (PT-CDI: WS; Silva et al, 2017), in which the reports of 3012 toddlers were collected. For the purpose of this study, only participants who had an indication of the maternal education level and indication of the number of months that the child had been attending day care were considered.…”

“…The European Portuguese version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (PT-CDI: WS) was used (Silva et al, 2017). This inventory is completed by parents, who are asked to report their children's linguistic and communicative abilities (Fenson et al, 2007).…”

El vocabulario productivo y su relación con la gramática en niños hablantes de castellano peruano entre los 16 y los 30 meses

“…El vocabulario y la gramática son considerados los principales indicadores de la adquisición del lenguaje en edades tempranas (Silva et al, 2017). Además, la estrecha relación entre ambos ha sido demostrada en diferentes estudios.…”

“…La relación entre vocabulario y gramática en el lenguaje infantil, medidos por el CDI, ha sido fuertemente demostrada en diferentes lenguas, incluso una vez controlada la edad y el nivel socioeconómico (Devescovi et al, 2005;Mariscal y Gallego, 2012;Serrat et al, 2010;Silva et al, 2017;Pérez-Pereira y Resches, 2011). En este estudio, un tercer objetivo era evaluar si el vocabulario productivo de los niños peruanos entre 16 y 30 meses explicaba su nivel de desarrollo gramatical, como ocurre en el español peninsular (Mariscal y Gallego, 2012) y en el mexicano (Thal et al, 2000) de niños de edades equivalentes, controlados los efectos de la edad y el nivel socioeconómico.…”