Tres indicadores de exposición a la lengua y su efecto en la adquisición del léxico de una lengua minoritaria

Abstract

The current study analyses short Basque CDI questionnaires’ accuracy to measure the effect of the amount of exposure to the language on bilingual children's vocabulary size. Additionally, it compares the predictive ability of three variables related to the amount of exposure: relative input, language of parental communication and parents’ linguistic profile. Data of 2098 children (8–49 months) obtained with the short versions of the Basque CDI (CDI-1vb, CDI-2vb and CDI-3v) revealed (a) these three instruments’ sensibility to measure the effect of language exposure on children's expressive vocabulary, (b) a very similar effect size for the three variables, and (c) an increase in effect size with age: no effect at the age of 8–15 months, small at 16–29 months and large at the age of 30–49 months. Data suggests that parents’ linguistic profile and language of inter-parental communication are indicators equally suitable of preschool children's exposure to the language, or even more so, than input, and leads the authors to claim the inclusion of those factors in the assessment of young children's lexical development, especially in minority languages.