Early vocabulary development in Danish and other languages: a CDI-based comparison

Area of Science:

• Child Development
• Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Early lexical development is a key indicator of cognitive and linguistic milestones.
• Cross-linguistic comparisons using standardized tools like the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) offer insights into language acquisition variations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the early lexical development trajectory of Danish children with that of children from 17 other language groups using CDI data.
• To evaluate the feasibility and challenges of cross-linguistic comparisons of early language development.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a Danish adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI).
• Compared Danish CDI data with 17 existing comparable international CDI studies.
• Analyzed vocabulary comprehension and production scores across different age points.

Main Results:

• Danish children's early lexical development trends align with international patterns.
• However, Danish children exhibited the lowest vocabulary comprehension scores from 1 year of age onwards compared to other language groups.
• A potential hypothesis for this delay is the complex sound structure of the Danish language impacting word segmentation.

Conclusions:

• Cross-linguistic CDI studies are valuable for understanding language acquisition.
• Standardization of study reporting and improved data accessibility are crucial for more robust cross-language comparisons.
• The Danish language's phonological characteristics may pose unique challenges for early vocabulary acquisition.