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

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 concrete... Mehr ...

Verfasser: VERHAGEN, Josje
VAN STIPHOUT, Mees
BLOM, Elma
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
Reihe/Periodikum: Journal of Child Language ; volume 49, issue 6, page 1193-1213 ; ISSN 0305-0009 1469-7602
Verlag/Hrsg.: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29050809
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000921000635

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.