Individual differences in the influence of phonological characteristics on expressive vocabulary development by young children

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Issue Date
2006Author
Maekawa, Junko
Storkel, Holly L.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
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Show full item recordAbstract
The current study attempts to differentiate effects of phonotactic probability (i.e. the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence), neighbourhood density (i.e. the number of phonologically similar words), word frequency, and word length on expressive vocabulary development by young children. Naturalistic conversational samples for three children (age 1;4–3;1) were obtained from CHILDES. In a backward regression analysis, phonotactic probability, neighbourhood density, word frequency, and word length were entered as possible predictors of ages of first production of words for each child. Results showed that the factors affecting first production of words varied across children and across word types. Specifically, word length affected ages of first production for all three children, whereas the other three variables affected only one child each. The implications of these findings for models of expressive vocabulary development are discussed.
Description
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original is available at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=465943&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0305000906007458
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Citation
Maekawa, Junko, and Holly L. Storkel. "Individual Differences in the Influence of Phonological Characteristics on Expressive Vocabulary Development by Young Children." Journal of Child Language J. Child Lang. 33.03 (2006): 439. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000906007458
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