CDI & the Lexicon
37-924-01
Sharon-Armon-Lotem
Bar-Ilan University
Early Lexicon: Form & content
Calvin talking at 22 months
First 50 Words of 1 Israeli girl (Keren) - in Order of Acquisition
From: Dromi, E. 1987. Early Lexical Development. Cambridge UP.
Word
1 buba
2 myau = xatul
3 dubi
4 tutu = rakevet
5 ia = xamor
6 hupa
7 hine
8 cifcif = cipor
9 tiktak = sha'on
10 ima
11 pil
12 mu = para
13 pisa = peca
14 toda
15 oto = mxonit
16 bamba
17 aba
18 am = oxel
19 haw = kelev
20 kaki
21 ze
22 ix = fuya
23 en
24 apchi = lehitatesh
25 or
Gloss
doll
cat
teddy
train
donkey
for contact
here
bird
clock
Mommy
elephant
cow
sore
thanks
car
pretzel
Daddy
eating
dog
poop
this, it
yucky
allgone
sneeze
light
Word
26 baat = taba'at
27 nadned
28 mayim
29 ken
30 nyar
31 apit
32 cet
33 uga
34 dod
35 etze
36 et
37 od
38 day
39 imaima
40 tik
41 boi(li)
42 mita
43 . nuf = yanshuf
44 laa)mod
45 te
46 xam
47 nok = tinok
48 noranora = meod,nora
49 kuku
50 kax
Gloss
ring
swing
water
yes
paper
spoon
go out, get out
cake, cookie
uncle = man
this, it
pen
more, another
enough! no more
unclear
bag, purse
come (to me)
bed
owl
(to) stand, get up
tea
hot
baby
very
peekaboo
take, Masc. Sg. Imp.
What is a word?
From comprehensible words to meaningful words
 Consistent phonetic shape similar in many cases to the
adult phonetic shape
 Consistent use in similar though not identical contexts
 Repeated production until an adequate response is
achieved
 Use of gestures (in a schema)
 Consistent feedback
Meaningful words have similar meaning in the child and
the adult lexicon
Early lexical acquisition: content
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People
Animals
Food
Body parts
Clothing
Vehicles
Household items
Space and motion
Social routines
Activities
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Keren’s full sample of 337 words (based on repeated
use in similar contexts) falls into the following categories:
words for objects (59%) including names and all other
nouns, activities (14%), adjectives (4%), social routines
(7%), unclassified words for which the category is not
obvious (16%). Are the proportions the same for the first
50 words?
The unclassified words take a bigger chunk at the
beginning.
How many of the first 10 words belong to each category?
Of the first 20 words?
Horizontal vs. vertical acquisition.
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At the beginning of the one-word phase, children
show a tendency to acquire words of different
semantic fields – horizontal acquisition.
Later on, they add words of the same semantic
field – vertical acquisition
First 50 Words of 3 American Children - in Order of Acquisition
From: Stoel-Gammon, C. & J. Cooper, 1984. Patterns of early lexical and phonological
development. Journal Child Language 11: 247-272, Table 4
Daniel
12;2 - 16;2
1 light
2 uh-oh
3 wha that
4 wow
5 banana
26 nose
27 fire
28 hot
29 yoghourt
30 pee-pee
Will
11;0 - 16;2
1 baby
2 mommy
3 doggie
4 juice
5 bye-bye
26 apple
27 nose
28 bird
29 alldone
30 orange
Sarah
12;2 - 19;0
1 uh-oh
2 alldone
3 light
4 down
5 shoes
6 kitty
7 baby
8 moo
9 quack
10 cookie
11 nice
12 rock [N]
13 clock
14 sock
31 juice
32 ball
33 wack-wack
34 frog
35 hello
36 yuk
37 aoole
38 Big Bird
39 walk
6 daddy
7 milk
8 cracker
9 done
10 ball
11 shoe
12 teddy
13 book
14 kitty
31 bottle
32 coat
33 hot
34 bib
35 hat
36 more
37 ear
38 nitenite
39 paper
6 baby
7 don't throw
8 moo
9 bite
10 three
11 hi
12 cheese
13 up
14 quack-quack
15 woof-woof
16 daddy
17 bubble
40 Ernie
41 horse
42 more
15 hi
16 Alex
17 no (no)
40 toast
41 O'Toole
42 bath
15 oink-oink
16 coat
17 beep-beep
18 hi
19 shoe
43 mommy
44 bunny
18 door
19 dolly
43 down
44 duck
18 keys
19 cycle
20 up
45 my
20 wha tha
45 leaf
20 mama
21 bye-bye
46 nut
21 cheese
46 cookie
21 daddy
22 bottle
23 no
24 rocky [V]
25 eye
47 orange
48 block
49 nite-nit
50 milk
22 oh wow
23 oh
24 button
25 eye
47 lake
48 car
49 rock
50 box
22 siren sound
23 grr
24 more
25 off
26 ticktock
27 ball
28 go
29 bump
30 pop-pop =
fire
31 out
32 hee-haw
33 eat
34 neigh
35 meow
36 sit
37 woof-woof
38 bah
39 hoo-hoo =
owl
40 bee
41 tree
42 mi-mi =
ferry
43 ss = snake
44 ooh-ooh =
monkey
45 yack-yack
=talk
46 hohoho =
Santa
47 bye bye
48 doll
49 kite
50 Muriel
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Which word category is most frequent?
Why?
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Is this the same in all languages?
Kim M, McGregor K.K, Thompson C.K. 2000. Early lexical
development in English- and Korean-speaking children:
language-general and language-specific patterns. J Child Lang.
27(2):225-54
.
How is word meaning acquired?
Sources of information:
 Grammatical form class
 Inference from communicative intent
 Meticulous (careful) caregiver
 Word learning constraints
Word learning constraints
Markman, E. M. 1994. Constraints on word meaning in early language
acquisition. Lingua 92, 199-227
• Taxonomic - terms refer to entities of the same
kind (rather than to the thematic relation
between objects) – the labeling game
Ellie Bean talking - 19 months
• Whole object – a novel label refers to an object
rather than its parts
• Mutual exclusivity – one label for each object –
motivates reference to parts and properties and
overrides the taxonomic assumption leading to
proper names
These constraints are modulated by
nonlinguistic context, by children problem
solving and processing abilities and by the
pragmatics and syntax of the language.
The constraints are default assumptions –
probabilistic biases that provide a good
first guess. These are constraints as part
of a theory of learning rather than internal
constraints a-la UG. As such they are not
special purpose mechanisms.
Processes in meaning development
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Regular extension
Underextension
Overextension
Unclassified – context bound
Dromi: 212 out of 337 showed regular extension at
some point. 98 of the 212 were regular all along. At
the beginning, words move from one category to
another. Later acquisitions were more regular.
First words of a bilingual child (Shelli) – classified
From:
Berman, R. 1977. The role of proper nouns at the one-word stage. TAU ms.
Berman, R. 1978. Early verbs. International Journal of Psycholinguistics 5: 21-29
Age
People
Word
18 mos idzi = Itsi
uti= Ruti
lala= Lela
aba
Dadi =
David
19;0
19;15
aba ~ idzi
Mimi
Bele
eli/ali =
Shelly
miyi =
Miri
ima ~ uti
aba
Gloss
father
mother
sister
Daddy
Daddy,
cousin
cousin
Yonti,
self
haw-haw
buw
haw
dyo
xexexexe
sleeping
horsieback
animals in book
airplane
(category-label)
dog, horse, etc.
'moo'
dog
camel, horsie
cat
sitter
Oyi!
mother
only her
Dad
20
20;15
Sya = Siya dog
Koko
dog
(Shar)on
cousin
(R)oni
eli ~ ali
Nursery words
Word
Gloss
alo = hello phone
cousin
self in
mirror
shshsh
dyo
xxxx
grgrgr
Other
Word
am =
xam
doi
lo ~ now
oto
Gloss
hot
dog, Dolly
no
car, tractor, bus
bo
(d)ubi
kele(v)
inne
come ms. Imp.
teddy
dog
here [deictic]
surprise
lililili
give me
i?o
kuku
donkey
cock
li
bu
do
uki
ke(n)
to-me
book
doll
cookie
yes
upala
digdi
(n)umi
all-fall-down
tickle
sleepies
oto
pele
bay-bay
dele(t)
kxi
zuzi
zse
hine
ship (in picture)
pelican
kuku
peekaboo
od
say
may(im)
door, open
take, Fem. Imp
move, Fem. Imp
wanting
when asked
where X is
more
outside
Water (category)
tap, sprinkler,
bottle, coffee,
bath
Early lexical acquisition: rate & the
vocabulary spurt
Dromi, E. 1986. The one-word period as a stage in language
development. In I. Levin (ed.) Stages and Structure: Reopenning the
Debate. Ablex. 220-245: Figures 1 and 2
Dromi (1986)
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Lexicon: 337 words
Age: 0;10,12 - 1;5,23
Beginning: words enter very slowly up to around 10 words
10th-21st week: up to 10 words a week
21st-24th week: 18 words a week.
25th: 44 new words – vocabulary spurt
A decline from week 28th and on.
Word combinations emerge on week 32
Two smaller bells with picks at weeks 11 and 21
The rate is curvilinear.
Clark, E. V. 1994. The Lexicon in Acquisition. Cambridge
University Press: Figures 2-3 and 2-4
Clark (1994)
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Lexicon: 337 words
Age: 1;0,10 - 1;9,24
Beginning: 1 to 7 words a week
12th-25th: 5 to 12 words a week
26th-41st: 10 to 20 words a week
Smaller picks all along, but no one spurt
Word combinations emerge on week 9 and increase
gradually until week 29
A spurt of word combinations starting on week 29
Goldfield, B. A. and J. S. Reznick. 1990. Early lexical
acquisition: rate, content, and the vocabulary spurt. Journal
of Child Language 17, 171-183: Figures 4 and 5
Goldfield and Reznick (1990)
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“Gradual [growth] with occasional spurt intervals
alternating with intervals of slower growth” (p. 177)
Lexicon: 75-100 words
Ages: 1;2 – 1;9 (Later-born)
Average of 2 to 5 words a week
Gradual growth in the use of nouns staying around
the 50% level (compared to the “spurt group” with a
rise from 30% to 80%)
What are the possible explanations for
these differences?
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Individual differences: focus on objects vs.
activities, focus on combinations rather than
single words.
Variation in the input – the naming game
Different in methods of data collection
Size of the studied lexicon
Is there a difference between comprehension
and production?
Benedict, H. 1979. Early lexical development:
comprehension and production. Journal of Child
Language 6, 183-200
The CDIs – MacArthur-Bates
Communicative Development Inventories
By Larry Fenson, Ph.D., Virginia A. Marchman, Ph.D.,
Donna J. Thal, Ph.D., Philip S. Dale, Ph.D., J. Steven
Reznick, Ph.D., & Elizabeth Bates, Ph.D.
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/cdi/cdiwelcome.htm
What do the CDIs look like?
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY BABYLAB
Toddler Communicative Development Inventories
Info extracted from the CDI on early lexical
acquisition
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/lexical/results.php
Fenson, et al. (2000).
The adaptation to Hebrew
Maital, S. L., Dromi, E., Sagi, A. and
Bornstein, M. H. (2000) The Hebrew
Communicative Development Inventory:
language specific properties and crosslinguistic generalizations. Journal of Child
Language, 27, 43-67. OLA 27/12
*Ring, E.D. & Fenson, L. (2000). The correspondence
between parent report and child performance for receptive
and expressive vocabulary beyond infancy. First Language,
20, 141-159.
Is parental report a valid measure of child
performance?
Participants: 40 children 20-30 months-old
 Instruments:
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A
double-picture booklet for receptive
vocabulary
 A single-picture booklet for receptive
vocabulary
 CDIs
Comprehension
Child parent correlation: r=0.55, p<0.01
Within subject (level of difficulty): F(2,76)=81.93, p< 0.01
Between groups (child-adult): F(1,39)=5.20, p<0.05
But: no significant interaction
Production
Child parent correlation: r=0.67, p<0.01
Within subject (level of difficulty): F(2,76)=64.69, p< 0.01
Between groups (child-adult): F(1,39)=12.95, p<0.05
But: no significant interaction
CDI & the production task
Jahn-Samilo et al. 1999
Conclusion
Parents picture cued report is an effective
tool for indexing children’s lexical abilities
 Children’s performance at the lab
underestimates their abilities (even on
check trials)
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The lexicon of Children with SLI
Late talkers (<50 words at 2)
 Smaller vocabulary
 Word finding difficulties
 Difficulties in learning new words
 Low phonological awareness / low on NWR
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At the age of 5 & 13 (Gathercole, Service, Hitch, Adams and Martin 1999)
Leonard, Miller & Gerber (1999)
Summary of findings
Based on 100-utternaces segments:
 Slopes are not different
 Intercepts were different – across the ages
the vocabulary of children with SLI was
less diverse (110 vs. 138 words in children
with TLD)
 These findings also applied for nouns and
verbs separately.
 Vocabulary size corresponded to
grammatical morphology
Lexical-Semantic organization in
SLI (Sheng & McGregor 2010)
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Online word
association
task: “Say the
first word that
comes to your
mind”.
Naming (Simonsen, 2002)
6 years old Finish-Swedish BL
 Naming task (Renfrew Word Finding
Vocabulary test)
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Scores
Total naming time
SLI
Controls
BL
25.9
28.6
ML
28.5
36.3
SLI
Controls
BL
06:26
06:02
ML
04:11
04:53
Findings
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MSLI- phonological naming problems more often than
the other groups (can explain their fast naming speed)
Substitution of phonemes: MSLI > BSLI
The bilingual children have difficulty in finding words
BLC is slow in naming, does not find the target word as
accurately as the MLC, but uses strategies that are
pragmatically efficient: describes, chooses a Finnish
word, or uses gestures.
Friedmann & Novogrodsky –
subtypes of SLI (2008)
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At age 10-12:
Children with LeSLI (p. 211)
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10 Hebrew-speaking children aged 9;3 to 13;6 years
(with a mean of 11;1), 7 boys and 3 girls.
“A significant difficulty in the SHEMESH naming task,
and on at least one additional lexical task. Their
performance on the SHEMESH was 85% correct (84%89%), significantly poorer than the average of control
participants in 4th-6th grade (M = 95%, SD = 2%, p < .05,
Crawford & Howell, 1998 t-test).”
“Their naming difficulty was manifested in failure to
name, in naming errors, and in response times longer
than 5 seconds, hesitations, circumlocutions, providing a
description instead of naming, and use of gestures.”
“The lexical difficulty was evident also in their
spontaneous speech”
Hick, R. F., Joseph, K. L., Conti-Ramsden,
G., Serratrice, L. & B. Faragher (2002)
Vocabulary profiles of children with specific
language impairment. Child language
teaching and therapy 18 (2) 2002, 165 – 180
– EFRAT 3/1
Thal, D. J., O'Hanlon, L., Clemmons, M. and
LS., Fralin (1999) Validity of a Parent Report
Measure of Vocabulary and Syntax for
Preschool Children With Language
Impairment. Journal of Speech, Language,
and Hearing Research 42 482-496 - MONA
3/1
Heilmann, J., Ellis Weismer, S., Evans, J.
and C. Hollar. (2005). Utility of the
MacArthur–Bates Communicative
Development Inventory in Identifying
Language Abilities of Late-Talking and
Typically Developing Toddlers. American
Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 14,
40-51 IRIS 10/1