TY - JOUR
T1 - Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT)
AU - Haman, Ewa
AU - Łuniewska, Magdalena
AU - Hansen, Pernille
AU - Simonsen, Hanne Gram
AU - Chiat, Shula
AU - Bjekić, Jovana
AU - Blažienė, Agnė
AU - Chyl, Katarzyna
AU - Dabašinskienė, Ineta
AU - Engel de Abreu, Pascale
AU - Gagarina, Natalia
AU - Gavarró, Anna
AU - Håkansson, Gisela
AU - Harel, Efrat
AU - Holm, Elisabeth
AU - Kapalková, Svetlana
AU - Kunnari, Sari
AU - Levorato, Chiara
AU - Lindgren, Josefin
AU - Mieszkowska, Karolina
AU - Montes Salarich, Laia
AU - Potgieter, Anneke
AU - Ribu, Ingeborg
AU - Ringblom, Natalia
AU - Rinker, Tanja
AU - Roch, Maja
AU - Slančová, Daniela
AU - Southwood, Frenette
AU - Tedeschi, Roberta
AU - Tuncer, Aylin Müge
AU - Ünal-Logacev, Özlem
AU - Vuksanović, Jasmina
AU - Armon-Lotem, Sharon
PY - 2017/1/1
Y1 - 2017/1/1
N2 - This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.
AB - This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.
KW - basic word classes
KW - cross-linguistic comparison
KW - Lexical development
KW - word comprehension
KW - word production
U2 - 10.1080/02699206.2017.1308553
DO - 10.1080/02699206.2017.1308553
M3 - Article
SN - 0269-9206
VL - 31
SP - 818
EP - 843
JO - Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics
JF - Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics
IS - 11-12
ER -