Mikateko Ndhambi

Biographic Data

ID5759489
NAMEMikateko Ndhambi
GIVEN NAMESMikateko
FAMILY NAMENdhambi
SIGNATURENDHAMBI M
AFFILIATIONSSefako Makgatho Health Sciences University
ORCID0000-0002-4328-3093
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS4
TOTAL CITATIONS0
WORKS AS AUTHOR4
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX0

  • Examining Noun Bias in the Vocabulary Development of Xitsonga-Speaking Children Aged 16 to 32 Months

    Open AccessMikateko Ndhambi, Heather Brookes et al.ARTICLEFirst Language2026

    Studies of early lexical development have examined children’s vocabulary composition with the aim of quantifying early preference in the acquisition of nouns, predicates (verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), and closed-class/function words. Their findings show that a noun bias is common, suggesting it could be a universal aspect of early language development. However, only a small percentage of the world’s languages have been investigated. This paper…

  • Instrument adaptation for measuring early child language development across multilingual and sociocultural diverse settings

    Heather Brookes, Frenette Southwood et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2026

    This article describes the adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for South Africa's 11 official spoken languages. The CDI is a parent-report tool that measures early language development from 8 to 30 months. We developed cross-linguistically comparable CDIs, representing two distinct language families, West Germanic and southern Bantu, using a common protocol. We describe our approach to item construction and…

  • Mean Length of Utterance

    Open AccessHeather Brookes, Patricia Makaure et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2025

    Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) has been widely used to measure children’s early language development in a variety of languages. This study investigates the utility of MLU to measure language development in four agglutinative and morphologically complex Southern Bantu languages. Using a variant of MLU, MLU3, based on the three longest sentences children produced, we analysed the utterances of 448 toddlers (16-32 months) collected using the MacArth…

  • A Crosslinguistic Study of Gesture and Lexical Development in South African Infants

    Open AccessHeather Brookes, Frenette Southwood et al.ARTICLEFirst Language2025

    This study compares early gesture and lexical development in 1,199 infants (0;8–1;6) across South Africa’s 11 official spoken languages using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures. We examined the effect of age, sex, ecological (urban-rural) setting, and maternal level of education (MLE) on early language development. Age was a significant predictor of gesture, comprehension, and production. There was no evid…