Double it up: Vocabulary size comparisons between UK bilingual and monolingual toddlers

IF 2 2区心理学 Q3 PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL

Infancy Pub Date : 2023-10-04 DOI:10.1111/infa.12562

Serene Siow, Nicola A. Gillen, Irina Lepădatu, Kim Plunkett

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Abstract

We compared vocabulary sizes in comprehension and production between bilingual toddlers growing up in the United Kingdom (UK) and age-matched UK English monolinguals (12–36 months old) using parent-report vocabulary questionnaires. We found that bilingual toddlers' vocabulary sizes in English were smaller than the vocabulary sizes of their monolingual peers. Notably, this vocabulary gap was not found when groups were compared on conceptual vocabulary in comprehension. Conceptual scoring also reduced the vocabulary gap in production but group differences were still significant. Bilingual toddlers knew more words than monolinguals when words across their two languages were added together, for both comprehension and production. This large total vocabulary size could be attributed to a high proportion of doublets (cross-linguistic word pairs with the same meaning) in bilinguals' vocabularies. These findings are discussed in relation to language exposure, facilitation from cross-linguistic overlap and maturation constraints on vocabulary size.

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加倍：英国双语和单语幼儿的词汇大小比较。

我们使用家长报告词汇问卷，比较了在英国（UK）长大的双语幼儿和年龄匹配的英国英语单语儿童（12-36个月大）在理解和生产方面的词汇大小。我们发现，双语幼儿的英语词汇量小于单语同龄人的词汇量。值得注意的是，当对理解中的概念词汇进行比较时，并没有发现这种词汇差距。概念评分也减少了生产中的词汇差距，但组间差异仍然显著。当两种语言的单词加在一起，既能理解又能产生时，双语幼儿比单语幼儿知道更多的单词。这种庞大的总词汇量可能归因于双语者词汇中双字（具有相同含义的跨语言单词对）的比例很高。这些发现与语言暴露、跨语言重叠的促进以及词汇大小的成熟限制有关。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Infancy PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL-

CiteScore

4.00

自引率

7.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： Infancy, the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies, emphasizes the highest quality original research on normal and aberrant infant development during the first two years. Both human and animal research are included. In addition to regular length research articles and brief reports (3000-word maximum), the journal includes solicited target articles along with a series of commentaries; debates, in which different theoretical positions are presented along with a series of commentaries; and thematic collections, a group of three to five reports or summaries of research on the same issue, conducted independently at different laboratories, with invited commentaries.