Abstract
Nouns and verbs are considered as fundamental categories of lexical development, and there are contradicting views on the order of the acquisition. One view claims that nouns are acquired earlier than verbs and this primacy of nouns can be attributed to perceptual-conceptual constraints from a linguistic point of view, on the other hand, nouns and verbs are the lexical units which categorically highlight language-general and language-specific characteristics. These language-specific characteristics have motivated this research because of the different typological characteristics between Turkish and Dutch in terms of nouns and verbs. The aim of this study is two-fold: to investigate the Dutch and Turkish lexicon of Turkish-Dutch bilingual children with respect to noun-verb categories and to consider the role of gender. Our sample comprised 55 Turkish-Dutch bilingual children aged between 9 and 36 months. We found that age, language and gender are at play during early lexical development. Vocabulary develops after 12 months and nouns are prioritized over verbs both in comprehension and production.
Appendix 1
Lexical categories and gestures in the T-CDI-I and in the N- CDI-I.
N-CDI | T-CDI | ||
---|---|---|---|
Total vocabulary | 434 | 418 | |
Items in the categories | |||
1. | Sound effects & animal sounds | 17 | 10 |
2. | Vehicles | 12 | 7 |
3. | Toys | 11 | 8 |
4. | Animal names | 38 | 17 |
5. | Food and drinks | 41 | 43 |
6. | Clothing | 21 | 18 |
7. | Words about time | 7 | 6 |
8. | Body parts | 21 | 17 |
10. | Games and routines | 17 | 31 |
11. | Question words | 4 | 7 |
12. | Quantifiers and articles | 6 | 8 |
13. | Pronouns | 10 | 12 |
14. | Small household items | 36 | 27 |
15. | Descriptive words | 35 | 25 |
16. | Action words | 57 | 95 |
17. | Outside things & places to go | 35 | 21+13 |
18. | People | 19 | 21 |
19. | Prepositions & localizations | 14 | 10 |
Appendix 2
Lexical categories in the T-CDI-II and in the N-CDI-II.
N-CDI | T-CDI | ||
---|---|---|---|
Total vocabulary | 702 | 711 | |
Items in the categories | |||
1. | Sound effects & animal sounds | 21 | 13 |
2. | Vehicles | 17 | 14 |
3. | Toys | 19 | 20 |
4. | Animal names | 47 | 41 |
5. | Food and drinks | 69 | 66 |
6. | Clothing | 29 | 32 |
7. | Words about time | 15 | 13 |
8. | Body parts | 31 | 27 |
9. | Furniture and rooms | 34 | 27 |
10. | Games and routines | 26 | 40 |
11. | Question words | 7 | 12 |
12. | Quantifiers and articles | 16 | 23 |
13. | Pronouns | 23 | 21 |
14. | Small household items | 52 | 33 |
15. | Descriptive words | 60 | 61 |
16. | Action words | 106 | 146 |
17. | Outside things | 28 | 37 |
18. | Places to go | 23 | 25 |
19. | People | 29 | 32 |
20. | Prepositions & localizations | 25 | 21 |
21. | Auxiliaries | 19 | - |
22. | Conjunctions | 6 | 7 |
References
Aksu-Koç, A., A. Küntay, F. Acarlar, İ. Maviş, H. Sofu, S. Topbaş and F. Turan. 2009. The assessment and evaluation of early lexical and grammatical development in Turkish: The Turkish Communicative Development Inventories, TIGE-I and TIGE-II. (Final report of Project no: 107K058, submitted to Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Foundation.)Search in Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A. and D.I. Slobin. 1985. “Acquisition of Turkish”. In: Slobin, D.I. (ed.). The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. London: Lawrence Erlbaum. 839– 878.Search in Google Scholar
Altınkamış, F., S. Kern and H. Sofu. 2014. “When context matters more than language: Verb or noun in French and Turkish caregiver speech”. First Language 34(6). 537– 550.10.1177/0142723714560179Search in Google Scholar
Bates, E.V., D. Marchman, L. Thal, L. Fenson, P. Dale, S. Reznick, J. Reilly and J. Hartung. 1994. “Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary”. Journal of Child Language 21. 85–123.10.1017/S0305000900008680Search in Google Scholar
Bornstein, M. H., L.R. Cote, S. Maital, K. Painter, S. Park, L. Pascual, M.G. Pêcheux, J. Ruel, P. Venuti and A. Vyt. 2004. “Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American English”. Child Development 75. 1115–1139.10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00729.xSearch in Google Scholar
Caselli, C., P. Casadio and E. Bates. 1999. “A comparison of the transition from first words to grammar in English and Italian”. Journal of Child Language 26. 69–111.10.1017/S0305000998003687Search in Google Scholar
Choi, S. and A. Gopnik. 1993. “Nouns are not always learned before verbs: An early verb explosion in Korean”. Paper presented at the 25th Child Language Research Forum, Stanford University.Search in Google Scholar
Choi, S. and A. Gopnik. 1995. “Early acquisition of verbs in Korean: A cross-linguistic study”. Jouurnal of Child Language 22. 497–529.10.1017/S0305000900009934Search in Google Scholar
Conboy, B. T. and D.J. Thal. 2006. “Ties between the lexicon and grammar”. Child Development 77. 712–735.10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00899.xSearch in Google Scholar
De Houwer, A. 1995. “Bilingual language acquisition”. In: Fletcher, P. and B. MacWhinney (eds.), The handbook of child language. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. 219–205.Search in Google Scholar
Field, A. 2009. Discovering statistics using SPSS. London: Sage.Search in Google Scholar
De Houwer, A., M.H. Bornstein and D.L. Putnick. 2014. “A bilingual-monolingual comparison of young children’s vocabulary size: Evidence from comprehension and production”. Applied Psycholinguistics 35(6). 1189–1211.10.1017/S0142716412000744Search in Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 1981. “Some interesting differences between verbs and nouns”. Cognition and Brain Theory 4. 161–178.Search in Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 1982. “Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning”. In: Kuczaj, S. (ed.), Language development. (Vol. 2. Language, thought, and culture.) Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 301–333.Search in Google Scholar
Gentner, D. and L. Boroditsky. 2009. “Early acquisition of nouns and verbs: Evidence from Navajo”. In: Gathercole, V. (ed.), Routes to language: Studies in honor of Melissa Bowerman. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. 5–36.Search in Google Scholar
Gillis, S. and A. Verlinden. 1988. Nouns and verbs in early lexical development: Effects of input frequency? Antwerp: University of Antwerp.Search in Google Scholar
Jackson-Maldonado, D., D. Thal, V. Marchman, E. Bates and V. Guitierrez-Clellen. 1993. “Early lexical development of Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers”. Journal of Child Language 20. 523–549.10.1017/S0305000900008461Search in Google Scholar
Kambanaros, M. 2013. “Does verb type affect action naming in specific language impairment (SLI)? Evidence from instrumentality and name relation”. Journal of Neurolinguistics 26(1). 160–177.10.1016/j.jneuroling.2012.07.003Search in Google Scholar
Kambanaros, M. 2016. “Verb and noun word retrial in bilingual aphasia: A case study of language- and modality-specific levels of breakdown”. Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 19(2). 169–184.10.1080/13670050.2015.1037717Search in Google Scholar
Kambanaros, M., K.K. Grohmann, M. Michaelides and E.Theodorou. 2014. “On the nature of verb–noun dissociations in bilectal SLI: A Psycholinguistic perspective from Greek”. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17(1). 169–188.10.1017/S1366728913000035Search in Google Scholar
Kauschke, C. and C. Hofmeister. 2002. “Early lexical development in German: A study on vocabulary growth and vocabulary composition during the second and third year of life”. Journal of Child Language 29. 735–757.10.1017/S0305000902005330Search in Google Scholar
Kern, S. 2004. “Semantic distribution of French-speaking children’s first words”. In: Drevillon, J., J. Vivier, and A. Salinas. (eds), Proceedings of ISAPL 2000. Caen, France: Europia.Search in Google Scholar
Kern, S. 2007. “Lexicon development in French-speaking infants”. First Language 27. 227–250.10.1177/0142723706075789Search in Google Scholar
Kern, S. and F.A. Türkay. 2006. “Influence cognitive générale et ou langagiéré spécifique sur les premiers mots des enfants: Etude pilote chez des enfants français et des enfants turcs”. Poster presentend at ARCo. Colloque de l’Association pour la Recherche Cognitive. France: Bordeaux.Search in Google Scholar
Ketrez, N. and A. Aksu-Koç. 2003. “Acquisition of noun and verb categories in Turkish”. In: Özsoy, A. S., D. Akar, M. Nakipoğlu-Demiralp, E. Erguvanlı Taylan and A. Aksu-Koç (eds.), Proceedings of the tenth international conference in Turkish linguistics. Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press. 239–245.Search in Google Scholar
Küntay, A. and D.I. Slobin. 2001. “Discourse behavior of lexical categories in Turkish child-directed speech: Nouns vs. verbs”. In: Almgren, M., A. Barreña, M. Ezeizabarrena, I. Idiazabal and B. MacWhinney. (eds.), Research on child language acquisition: Proceedings for the 8th conference of the international association for the study of child language. Cascadilla Press. 928–946.Search in Google Scholar
Lucas, I.G. and A.B.I. Bernardo. 2008. “Exploring noun bias in Filipino-English bilingual children”. The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory in Human Development 169(2). 149–164.10.3200/GNTP.169.2.149-164Search in Google Scholar
Marchman, V., C. Martinez-Sussman. 2002. “Concurrent validity of caregiver/parent report measures of language for children who are learning both English and Spanish”. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 45. 983–997.10.1044/1092-4388(2002/080)Search in Google Scholar
Ogura, T., P. S. Dale, Y. Yamashita, T. Murase and A. Mahieu,. 2006. “The use of nouns and verbs by Japanese children and their caregivers in book-reading and toy-playing context”. Journal of Child Language 33. 1–29.10.1017/S0305000905007270Search in Google Scholar
Tardif, T. 1993. Adult-to-child speech and language acquisition in Mandarin Chinese. (PhD dissertation, Yale University, New Haven.)Search in Google Scholar
Tardif, T. 1996. “Nouns are not always learned before verbs: Evidence from Mandarin speakers’ early vocabularies”. Developmental Psychology 32. 492–504.10.1037/0012-1649.32.3.492Search in Google Scholar
Tardif, T., M. Shatz. and L. Naigles. 1997. “Caregiver speech and children’s use of nouns versus verbs: A comparison of English, Italian and Mandarin”. Journal of Child Language 24. 535–565.10.1017/S030500099700319XSearch in Google Scholar
Taxitari, L., M. Kambanaros, and K.K. Grohmann, 2016. “Investigating early language development in a bilectal context”. In: Babatsouli, E. and D. Ingram (eds.), Proceedings of the international symposium on monolingual and bilingual speech. 384–395.Search in Google Scholar
Trask, R.L. 1999. “Parts of speech”. In: Brown, K. and J. Miller (eds.), Concise encyclopaedia of grammatical categories. Oxford: Elsevier. 278–284.Search in Google Scholar
Türkay, F. 2005. Children’s early lexicon in terms of noun/verb dominance. (PhD dissertation, Çukurova University, Adana.)Search in Google Scholar
Xuan, L., and C. Dollaghan. 2012. “Language-specific noun bias: Evidence from bilingual children”. Journal of Child Language 40(5). 1057–1075.10.1017/S0305000912000529Search in Google Scholar
Zink, I. and M. Lejaegere. 2002. N-CDIs: Lijsten voor communicatieve ontwikkeling. Aanpassing en hernormering van de MacArthur CDIs van Fenson et al. Acco, Leuven (Belgium)/Leusden (Netherlands).Search in Google Scholar
© Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland