In Search of Competition between Lexical and Grammatical Growth

Bibliographic Data

ID13665706
AuthorsHarrie Boelens (0000-0003-4006-6859, Leiden University, corresponding author), Jeroen Mollers (Leiden University)
Year2009
Volume104
Issue2
Pages407-417
Publication date2009-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychological Reports (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-2941 • E-ISSN: 1558-691X
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2466/pr0.104.2.407-417
PMID19610469
OpenAlexW2114890629
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

Relations between lexical and grammatical growth were examined in a Dutch boy from age 1:0 to 2:6. The overall shape of lexical growth was a pronounced increase in rate until age 2:2 approximately and a slight decrease in rate thereafter. Two measures of early grammatical growth (the percentage of obligatory plural contexts in which plurals were used and mean length of utterances) reached high levels well before the age of 2:2. Further, there was no evidence for a relation between the change from one week to the next in the number of new words and the change from one week to the next on the two grammatical measures. Thus, no evidence for competition between lexical and grammatical growth was found on both a larger and a smaller time scale. Patterns of lexical and grammatical growth suggestive of competition may be especially likely when the productive lexicon grows very fast initially

Biology · Competition (biology · Lexicon · Linguistics · Plural · Child and Animal Learning Development · Language Development and Disorders · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development

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