This paper explores the early lexicon development of 548 monolingual French-speaking infants aged 8;0—16;0. Vocabulary acquisition was followed using the French adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development: Words and Gestures (Fenson et al., 1993). The results generally concur with those reported for other languages. There were striking individual variations in both terms of onset and rate of lexical growth. However, the total vocabulary scores increased steadily in all sections with chronological age. Girls showed superior scores in terms of labelling behaviours and lexical production. Nouns were predominant in both production and comprehension from 8 to 16 months regardless of the lexicon size. Predicates were the second most represented category, followed by function words. Both these categories increased with lexicon size. In the small lexicon, the most represented semantic categories were the same for comprehension and production: `games and routines', `people', `sound effects and animal sounds'. In the lexicon of more than 50 items, the percentages of `action words' became higher. A particularly strong association was found between total gestures and vocabulary comprehension.
Au, T.K., Dapretto, M. & Song, Y.K. (1994). Input vs. constraints: Early word acquisition in Korean and English. Journal of Memory andLanguage, 33, 567—582.
2.
Bassano, D. (1998). L'élaboration du lexique précoce chez l'enfant français: Structure et variabilité. Enfance, 4, 123—153.
3.
Bassano, D. (2000). Early development of nouns and verbs in French: Exploring the interface between lexicon and grammar. Journal of Child Language, 27, 521—559.
4.
Bates, E., Benigni, L., Bretherton, I., Camaioni, L. & Volterra, V. (1977). From gesture to first word: On cognitive and social prerequisites. In M. Lewis & L. A. Rosemblum (Eds), Interaction, conversation, and the development of language (pp. 247—307). New York : Wiley.
5.
Bates, E., Bretherton, I. & Snyder, L.S. (1988). From first words to grammar. New York: Cambridge University Press.
6.
Bates, E., Dale, P.S. & Thal, D. (1995). Individual differences and their implications for theories of language development. In P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney (Eds), Handbook of child language (pp. 96—151). Oxford : Basil Blackwell.
7.
Bates, E., Marchman, V., Thal, D., Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, S., Reilly, J. & Hartung, J. (1994). Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary. Journal of Child Language, 21, 85—123.
8.
Berglund, E. & Eriksson, M. (1994, 18—20 November). Parental reports of early language skills. Presentation of inventories and a cross-linguistic comparison . Paper presented at the Femte Nordiske symposium om barnesprak, Lysebu, Oslo.
9.
Berglund, E. & Eriksson, M. (1998). Communicative development in Swedish children 16—28 months old: The Swedish Early Communicative development Inventory — Words and Sentences. Report from the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University.
10.
Bornstein, M.H., Cote, L.R., Maital, S., Painter, K., Park, S.-Y., Pêcheux, M.-G., Ruel, J., Venuti, P. & Vyt, A. (2004). Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American English . Child Development, 75(4), 1115—1139.
11.
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, 159—199.
12.
Dale, P.S., Bates, E., Reznick, J.S. & Morisset, C.E. (1989). The validity of a parent report instrument of child language at twenty months. Journal of Child Language, 16(2), 239—249.
13.
De Houwer, A. & Gillis, S. (1998). Dutch child language: An overview. In: The acquisition of Dutch (pp. 1—100). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
14.
Dromi, E. & Fishelzon, G.-I. (1986). Similarity, specificity and contrast: A study of early semantic categories. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 25, 25—32.
15.
Eriksson, M. & Berglund, E. (1999). Swedish early communicative development. First Language, 19(1), 55—90.
16.
Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J., Pethick, S. & Reilly, J. (1993). MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: User's guide and technical manual. San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group.
17.
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).
18.
Gentner, D. (1982). Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In S. A. Kuczaj (Ed.), Language development: Vol. 2. Language, thought, and culture (pp. 301—334). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
19.
Grégoire, A. (1937). L'apprentissage du langage: Vol. 1. Les deux premières annees. Paris: Droz.
20.
Grégoire, A. (1947). L'apprentissage du langage: Vol. 2. La troisième année et les années suivantes. Liège/ Paris: Droz.
21.
Hamilton, A., Plunkett, K. & Schaffer, G. (2000). Infant vocabulary development assessed with a British communicative development inventory. Journal of Child Language, 27, 689—705.
22.
Hardy-Brown, K. (1983). Universals and individual differences: Disentangling two approaches to the study of language acquisition. Developmental Psychology, 19, 610—624.
23.
Harris, M. & Chasin, J. (1999). Developments in early lexical comprehension: A comparison of parental report and controlled testing. Journal of Child Language, 26, 453—460.
24.
Jackson-Maldonado, D., Marchman, V., Thal, D., Bates, E. & Gutierrez-Clellen, V. (1993). Early lexical acquisition in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers. Journal of Child Language, 20(3), 523—549.
25.
Klackenberg-Larsson, I. & Stenson, J. (1968). Data on the mental development during the first five years. Acta Paediatrica Scandinavia, Suppl. 187.
26.
Maccoby, E.A. (1966). The development of sex differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
27.
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, 43—67.
28.
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).
29.
Pine, J.M., Lieven, E.V.M. & Rowland, C.F. (1996). Observational and checklist measures of vocabulary composition: What do they mean?Journal of Child Language , 23, 573—589.
30.
Plomin, R. & Foch, T.T. (1981). Sex differences and individual differences. Child Development, 52, 383—385.
31.
Reese, E. & Read, S. (2000). Predictive validity of the New Zealand MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences. Journal of Child Language, 27(2), 255—266.
32.
Robinson, B. & Mervis, C. (1999). Comparing productive vocabulary measures from the CDI and a systematic diary study. Journal of Child Language , 26, 177—185.
33.
Suppes, P., Léveillé, M. & Smith, R. (1974). Developmental models of child's French syntax (Technical Report 243). Stanford: Stanford University.
