Does child-directed language differ from adult-directed language in ways that might facilitate word learning? Associative structure (the probability that a word appears with its free associates), contextual diversity, word repetitions and frequency were compared longitudinally across six language corpora, with four corpora of language directed at…

Examines issues relating to similarity neighborhoods of words in children's lexicons. Young children's receptive vocabularies were analyzed for three-phoneme, four-phoneme and five-phoneme words. The pattern of the original results from Charles-Luce & Luce (1990) was replicated. (18 references) (Author/CK)

Relatively little research has been done on the quantitative characteristics of children's word usage. This spoken count was undertaken to investigate those aspects of word usage and frequency which could cast light on lexical processes in grammar and verbal development in children. Three groups of 30 children each (boys and girls) from…

Transcriptions of recorded conversations of nine-year-old French children are analyzed and presented in this comparative word count. The actual count of the 55,588 word corpus is arranged alphabetically and contrasted with selected, identical words found in the Francais Fondamental word list. Proper nouns are listed separately at the end of the…

The significance of three mothers' speech for their infants' language development is considered in a continuing longitudinal study. The study began when the children (two females and one male) were 5 and 6 months of age and will continue until the subjects are 3 years old. In the speech data reported the children were from 6 to 18 months of age.…

This is the first of five volumes of recorded, transcribed conversation of 150 Spanish children from Madrid. Some 25 hours of normal, unrehearsed conversation serve as a linguistic corpus illustrative of vocabulary development at a specific age level. Half-hour recording sessions were made in groups of three, consisting of boys or girls from the…

This is the second of five volumes of recorded, transcribed conversation of 150 Spanish children from Madrid. Some 25 hours of normal, unrehearsed conversation serve as a linguistic corpus illustrative of vocabulary development at a specified age level. Half-hour recording sessions were made in groups of three, consisting of boys or girls from the…