Work

Parents’ reports of lexical and grammatical aspects of toddlers’ language in European Portuguese: Developmental trends, age and gender differences

Year: 2017

Type: article

Abstract: The results from a large-scale study on toddlers’ language acquisition in European Portuguese are presented. Toddlers’ lexical and grammatical competencies were assessed using the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences. The results, based on 3012 reports completed by parents, indicate an increase in the lexical size and on five measures of grammatical development (production of regular morphology, irregular morphology, over-regularizations, mean length of utterances and sentence complexity) across age groups. A main effect of gender was found for lexical size, production of regular and irregular morphology, production of over-regularizations and sentence complexity, with girls obtaining overall higher scores than boys. All lexical and grammatical development measures are positively correlated, even after controlling for age and gender effects. These findings are discussed in terms of their consistency with those obtained for other languages.

Source: First Language

DOI: 10.1177/0142723716689274

Authors: Carla Silva, Irene Cadime, Iolanda Ribeiro, Sandra Santos, Ana Lúcia Santos, Fernanda Leopoldina Viana

Institutions: University of Minho, Centro de Investigação em Estudos da Criança, University of Lisbon

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Awards: G1578237752, ADAPTAÇÃO DO INVENTÁRIO DE DESENVOLVIMENTO COMUNICATIVO DE MACARTHUR-BATES. ESTUDOS DE VALIDAÇÃO E DE TRACKING, AVALIAR PARA PREVENIR: Estudos de Tracking e Validação dos Inventários de Desenvolvimento Comunicativo de MacArthur-Bates para Português Europeu, O desenvolvimento comunicativo e linguístico até aos três anos de idade como preditor de competências de leitura no início da escolaridade, G8868700560