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Rasprave: Časopis Instituta za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje, Vol. 47 No. 1, 2021.

Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.47.1.3

Measures of Lexical Diversity in Narratives of Preschool and Early School Age Children

Gordana Hržica orcid id orcid.org/0000-0001-6067-9148 ; Edukacijsko-rehabilitacijski fakultet, Zagreb
Ivana Trtanj orcid id orcid.org/0000-0002-4700-8443 ; Fakultet za odgojne i obrazovne znanosti, Osijek

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Abstract

The development of vocabulary in the first language acquisition can be traced by analysing spoken language transcripts. Such language samples are obtained, for example, by eliciting a story by a wordless picture book. Measures of lexical diversity are used to assess vocabulary development. Two measures, namely the number of different words (NDW) and type-token ratio (TTR) have been criticized for their correlation with the length of transcripts. The recommendation is that a fixed number of words should be used to calculate them or that other measures, resistant to differences in length, should be used. Two of such measures are parameter D (D) and moving average type-token ratio (MATTR). However, there is no consensus in the literature about the most applicable measure of lexical diversity. Also, studies aiming to validate these measures are predominantly based on written language analysis of English language. Therefore, the goal of this study was to explore which measures of lexical diversity best reflect spoken language production of Croatian children of different age. In total 157 children were tested using a picture book Frog, where are you?. All four lexical diversity measures showed an increase in different age groups of children. Statistically significant differences were obtained for all measures. Three measures (NDW, TTR, D) differentiated two youngest age groups (4-year-olds and 6-year-olds) form the oldest (10-year-olds). However, only measure MATTR differentiated two youngest age groups form two oldest (8-year-olds and 10-year-olds).

Keywords

first language acquisition; vocabulary development; measures of lexical diversity

Hrčak ID:

260836

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/260836

Publication date:

20.10.2021.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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