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The Relationship between Early Lexical and Grammatical Development in Spanish: Evidence in Children with Different Linguistic Levels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Sonia Mariscal  and
Carlos Gallego
Sonia Mariscal*
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain)
Carlos Gallego
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense (Spain)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sonia Mariscal. Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). C/ Juan del Rosal, 10. 28040 Madrid (Spain). E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This study analyzes the relationship between lexical and grammatical development in Spanish children. The (European) Spanish version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI was used and administered to 593 Spanish-speaking children between the ages of 16 and 30-months-old. Regression analysis was applied to evaluate the relationship between age, vocabulary (total vocabulary, nouns, and verbs) and grammatical scores on two subsections of the Grammar Part. Total vocabulary explained a significantly greater proportion of variance in grammatical outcomes than age did. However, noun and verb vocabularies did not explain a greater proportion of variance in their respective morphologies than total vocabulary did. Additionally, the predictive relationship between vocabulary and grammar was found to be weaker for children whose scores were below the 10th percentile, although this could be due to the minor variability in this group and to extreme cases. We discuss the implications of these results in relation to the question of continuity between early vocabulary and grammar development in children.

En este estudio se analiza la relación entre el desarrollo léxico y gramatical en niños españoles. La versión española de los Inventarios MacArthur-Bates fue administrada a 593 niños de 16 a 30 meses de edad. Se aplicaron análisis de regresión para evaluar la relación entre la edad, el vocabulario (total, nominal y verbal) y las puntuaciones en dos sub-secciones del apartado gramatical. El vocabulario total explica una proporción significativamente mayor de la varianza de las puntuaciones gramaticales que la edad. Sin embargo, los vocabularios parciales, nominal y verbal, no explican proporciones significativamente mayores de la varianza de sus puntuaciones en morfología, que la edad. Por otro lado, la capacidad de predicción del vocabulario sobre la gramática resulta menor en los niños cuyas puntuaciones los sitúan por debajo del percentil 10; sin embargo, este resultado puede atribuirse a la menor variabilidad y a casos extremos hallados en este grupo. Se discuten las implicaciones de todo este conjunto de resultados en relación a la hipótesis de continuidad entre el vocabulario y la gramática en el desarrollo temprano.

Keywords

lexical-grammatical relationshipSpanish language acquisitionMacArthur-Bates Inventorieslate talkersrelación léxico-gramáticaadquisición de la lengua españolaInventarios MacArthur-Bateshablantes tardíos
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 112 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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