TY - JOUR
T1 - Vocabulary development in European Portuguese
T2 - a replication study using the language development survey
AU - Rescorla, Leslie
AU - Nyame, Josephine
AU - Dias, Pedro
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Purpose: Our objective was to replicate previous cross-linguistic findings by comparing Portuguese and U.S. children with respect to (a) effects of language, gender, and age on vocabulary size; (b) lexical composition; and (c) late talking. Method: We used the Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989) with children (18-35 months) learning European Portuguese (n = 181) and English (n = 206). Results: In both languages, girls had higher vocabulary scores than boys and vocabulary scores increased with age. Portuguese LDS scores were significantly lower than English scores, but the effect size was small. Cross-linguistic concordance of percentage use scores yielded a Q correlation of.50, with 64 of the “top 100” words being exact matches. Cross-linguistic concordance was highest for the youngest age group. In both languages, vocabulary composition in late talkers (children ≥ 24 months with < 50 words) was highly correlated with composition in vocabulary size-matched younger children. Conclusions: Results replicated previous Greek, Korean, and Italian LDS studies. The early lexicons of typical talkers and late talkers contained many of the same words, indicating considerable universality and suggesting good targets for clinical intervention.
AB - Purpose: Our objective was to replicate previous cross-linguistic findings by comparing Portuguese and U.S. children with respect to (a) effects of language, gender, and age on vocabulary size; (b) lexical composition; and (c) late talking. Method: We used the Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989) with children (18-35 months) learning European Portuguese (n = 181) and English (n = 206). Results: In both languages, girls had higher vocabulary scores than boys and vocabulary scores increased with age. Portuguese LDS scores were significantly lower than English scores, but the effect size was small. Cross-linguistic concordance of percentage use scores yielded a Q correlation of.50, with 64 of the “top 100” words being exact matches. Cross-linguistic concordance was highest for the youngest age group. In both languages, vocabulary composition in late talkers (children ≥ 24 months with < 50 words) was highly correlated with composition in vocabulary size-matched younger children. Conclusions: Results replicated previous Greek, Korean, and Italian LDS studies. The early lexicons of typical talkers and late talkers contained many of the same words, indicating considerable universality and suggesting good targets for clinical intervention.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85006966648&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1044/2016_JSLHR-L-15-0294
DO - 10.1044/2016_JSLHR-L-15-0294
M3 - Article
C2 - 27960004
AN - SCOPUS:85006966648
SN - 1092-4388
VL - 59
SP - 1484
EP - 1490
JO - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
JF - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
IS - 6
ER -