This study investigated early lexical development in French by analysing changes and
variability in lexical production and composition of children’s
spontaneous speech samples from three age groups: 1;8, 2;6 and 3;3 years (20
children in each). Analyses of general developmental changes showed that lexical
productivity increased strongly between 1;8 and 2;6 and between 2;6 and 3;3. Changes
in lexical composition mostly occurred between 1;8 and 2;6, indicating that the most
important reorganizations are achieved by 2;6. The main changes observed (decreases
in proportions of nouns and paralexical classes, and increases in proportions of
predicate and grammatical classes) fit overall the developmental trajectories found
for other languages, such as English and Italian. Two controversial issues were
particularly examined and discussed with regard to cognitive, language-specific and
methodological factors: noun-verb asynchrony and grammatical word explosion.
Quantitative individual differences in lexical composition were greater at 1;8 than
at 2;6 and 3;3, supporting the hypothesis that stylistic variation decreases in the
course of the third year. Children’s lexical profiles were strikingly
diversified at 1;8, whereas they appeared as variants of a same
‘grammatical profile’ at 2;6 and 3;3. We propose that the
decline of stylistic variations reflects the impact of developmental constraints,
such as the necessity for children to produce function words, which suggests that
variations found in the youngest children are not determinant factors for subsequent
lexical development.
Au, T. K. F.
,
Dapretto, M.
&
Song, Y. K.
(1994).
Input vs constraints: Early word acquisition in Korean and English
. Journal of Memory and Language, 33(5),
567-582
.
2.
Barrett, M. D.
(1995). Early lexical development. In
P. Fletcher
&
B. MacWhinney
(Eds), The handbook of child language.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers
.
3.
Bassano, D.
(2000a).
Early development of nouns and verbs in French: Exploring the interface
between the lexicon and grammar
. Journal of Child Language, 27(3),
521-559
.
4.
Bassano, D. (2000b). La constitution du lexique: le
“développement lexical précoce”. In M.
Kail & M. Fayol (Eds), L’acquisition du langage. Vol. 1: Le
langage en émergence (pp. 137-168). Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France.
5.
Bassano, D.
,
Laaha, S.
,
Maillochon, I.
&
Dressler, W. U.
(2004).
Early acquisition of verb grammar and lexical development: Evidence from
periphrastic constructions in French and Austrian German
. First Language, 24(1),
33-70
.
6.
Bassano, D.
,
Maillochon, I.
&
Eme, E.
(1998).
Developmental changes and variability in early lexicon: A study of French
children’s naturalistic productions
. Journal of Child Language, 25(3),
493-531
.
7.
Bates E.
,
Bretherton I.
&
Snyder L.
(1988). From first words to grammar: Individual differences
and dissociable mechanisms.
New York: Cambridge University Press
.
8.
Bates, E.
,
Dale, P.
&
Thal, D.
(1995). Individual differences and their implications for
theories of language development. In
P. Fletcher
&
B. MacWhinney
(Eds), The handbook of child language.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers
.
9.
Bates, E.
&
Goodman, J. C.
, (1999). On the emergence of grammar from the
lexicon. In
B. MacWhinney
(Ed.), The emergence of language (pp.
29-79).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
.
10.
Bates, E.
,
Marchman, V.
,
Thal, D.
,
Fenson, L.
,
Dale, P.
,
Reznick, J. S.
,
Reilly, J.
&
Hartung, J.
(1994).
Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary
. Journal of Child Language, 21(2),
85-124
.
11.
Bekoff, M.
(1977). Quantitative studies of three areas of classical
ethology: Social dominance, behavioral taxonomy and behavioral
variability. In
B. A. Hazlett
(Ed.), Quantitative methods in the study of animal behavior.
New York: Academic Press
.
12.
Bornstein, M. H.
,
Hahn, C. S.
&
Haynes, M. O.
(2004).
Specific and general language performance across early childhood: Stability
and gender considerations
. First Language, 24(3),
267-304
.
13.
Bornstein, M. H.
&
Haynes, M. O.
(1998).
Vocabulary competence in early childhood: Measurement, latent construct and
predictive validity
. Child Development, 69(3),
654-671
.
14.
Camaioni, L.
&
Longobardi, E.
(1995).
Nature and stability of individual differences in early lexical development
of Italian-speaking children
. First Language, 15(2),
203-218
.
15.
Caselli, M. C.
,
Bates, E.
,
Casadio, P.
,
Fenson, J.
,
Fenson, L.
,
Sanderl, L.
&
Weir, J.
(1995).
A cross-linguistic study of early lexical development
. Cognitive Development, 10(2),
159-199
.
16.
Caselli, M. C.
,
Casadio, P.
&
Bates, E.
(1999).
A comparison of the transition from first words to grammar in English and Italian
. Journal of Child Language, 26(1),
69-111
.
17.
Choi, S.
&
Gopnik, A.
(1995).
Early acquisition of verbs in Korean: A cross-linguistic study
. Journal of Child Language, 22(3),
497-529
.
18.
D’Odorico, L.
,
Carrubi, S.
,
Salerni, N.
&
Calvo, V.
(2001).
Vocabulary development in Italian children: A longitudinal evaluation of
quantitative and qualitative aspects
. Journal of Child Language, 28(2),
351-372
.
19.
Fenson, L.
,
Dale, P. S.
,
Reznick, J. S.
,
Bates, E.
,
Thal, D.
&
Pethick, S. J.
(1994).
Variability in early communicative development
. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development,
59 (5, Serial No. 242),
v-173
.
20.
Gentner, D.
(1982). Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic
relativity versus natural partitioning. In
S. Kuczaj
(Ed.). Language development, Vol. 2.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
.
21.
Gentner, D.
&
Boroditsky, L.
(2001). Individuation, relativity and early word
learning. In
M. Bowerman
&
S. Levinson
(Eds), Language acquisition and conceptual development.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
22.
Goldfield, B. A.
(1985).
Referential and expressive language: A study of two mother-child dyads
. First Language, 6(2),
119-131
.
23.
Goldfield, B. A.
(1990).
Pointing, naming, and talk about objects: Referential behaviour in children
and mothers
. First Language, 10(3),
231-242
.
24.
Gopnik, A.
,
Choi, S.
&
Baumberger, T.
(1996).
Cross-linguistic differences in early semantic and cognitive development
. Cognitive Development, 11(2),
197-227
.
25.
Hamilton, A.
,
Plunkett, K.
&
Schafer, G.
(2000).
Infant vocabulary development assessed with a British communicative
development inventory
. Journal of Child Language, 27(3),
689-705
.
26.
Huttenlocher, J.
,
Haight, W.
,
Bryk, A.
,
Seltzer, M.
&
Lyons, T.
(1991).
Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender
. Developmental Psychology, 27(2),
236-248
.
27.
Labrell, F.
,
Bassano, D.
,
Champaud, C.
,
Lemétayer, F.
,
Chemlal, S.
&
Bonnet, P.
(2001).
Impact de la méthodologie sur l’étude du
lexique: rapports parentaux vs production naturelle
. Paper presented at the International Congress on Early Lexical
Acquisition, Lyon.
28.
Lautrey, J.
(1993). Structure and variability: A plea for a
pluralistic approach to cognitive development. In
R. Case
&
W. Edelstein
(Eds), The new structuralism in cognitive development: Theory and
research on individual pathways (pp. 101-114).
Basel: Karger
.
29.
Lieven, E.
(1997). Variation in a crosslinguistic context.
In
D. I. Slobin
(Ed.), The cross-linguistic study of language acquisition, Vol. 5:
Expanding the contexts (pp. 199-263).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
.
30.
Lieven, E. V.
,
Pine, J. M.
&
Barnes, H. D.
(1992).
Individual differences in early vocabulary development: Redefining the
referential-expressive distinction
. Journal of Child Language, 19(2),
287-310
.
31.
MacWhinney, B.
(2000). The CHILDES Project: Tools for analysing talk.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
.
32.
Maital, S. L.
,
Dromi, E.
,
Sagi, A.
&
Bornstein, M. H.
(2000).
The Hebrew Communicative Development Inventory: Language specific
properties and cross-linguistic generalizations
. Journal of Child Language, 27(1),
43-67
.
33.
Nelson, K.
(1973).
Structure and strategy in learning to talk
. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development,
38 (1-2, Serial No. 149),
1-136
.
34.
Nelson, K.
(1981).
Individual differences in language development: Implication for development
and language
. Developmental Psychology, 17(2),
170-187
.
35.
Peters, A.
(1977).
Language learning strategies: Does the whole equal the sum of the parts?Language, 53,
560-573
.
36.
Peters, A.
(1997). Language typology, individual differences and the
acquisition of grammatical morphemes. In
D. I. Slobin
(Ed.), The cross-linguistic study of language acquisition, Vol. 5:
Expanding the contexts (pp. 135-197).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
.
37.
Peters, A. M.
&
Menn, L.
(1993).
False starts and filler-syllables: Ways to learn grammatical morphemes
. Language, 69,
742-777
.
38.
Pine, J. M.
&
Lieven, E.
(1993).
Reanalysing rote learned phrases: Individual differences in the transition
to multi-word speech
. Journal of Child Language, 20,
551-571
.
39.
Poulin-Dubois, D.
,
Graham, S.
&
Sippola, S.
(1995).
Early lexical development: The contribution of parental labelling and
infants’ categorization abilities
. Journal of Child Language, 22(2),
325-343
.
40.
Tardif, T.
(1996).
Nouns are not always learned before verbs: Evidence from Mandarin
speakers’ early vocabularies
. Developmental Psychology, 32(3),
492-504
.
41.
Tardif, T.
,
Gelman, S.
&
Xu, F.
(1999).
Putting the noun bias in context: A comparison of English and Mandarin
. Child Development, 70,
620-635
.
42.
Tardif, T.
,
Shatz, M.
&
Naigles, L.
(1997).
Caregiver speech and children’s use of nouns versus verbs: A
comparison of English, Italian and Mandarin
. Journal of Child Language, 24,
535-565
.
43.
Thordardottir, E. T.
,
Ellis Weismer, S.
&
Evans, J. L.
(2002).
Continuity in lexical and morphological development in Icelandic and
English-speaking 2-year-olds
. First Language, 22(1),
3-28
.
44.
Tomasello, M.
(1995). Pragmatic contexts for early verb
learning. In
M. Tomasello
&
W. E. Merriman
(Eds), Beyond names for things (pp.
115-146).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
.
45.
Tomasello, M.
(2003). Constructing a language.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
.
46.
van Geert, P.
&
van Dijk, M.
(2002).
Focus on variability: New tools to study intra-individual variability in
developmental data
. Infant Behavior and Development, 25,
340-374
.
47.
Veneziano, E.
(1999).
Early lexical, morphological and syntactic development in French: Some
complex relations
. The International Journal of Bilingualism,
3(2-3),
183-217
.
48.
Veneziano, E.
&
Sinclair, H.
(2000).
The changing status of ‘filler syllables’ on the way to
grammatical morphemes
. Journal of Child Language, 27(3),
461-500
.
49.
Ward, J. H.
(1963).
Hierarchical grouping to optimize an objective function
. Journal of the American Statistical Association,
58,
236
.
