1.1.4

Lexical Development

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Lexical Development

In 2010, the National Literacy Trust published a list of top 12 most common first words:

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12 most common first words

  • Dada
  • Mama
  • Cat
  • Dog
  • More
  • Baby
  • Ball
  • Duck
  • Teddy
  • Milk
  • Gran
  • Again
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Gervain

  • The reasoning behind why ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ are often first has caused debate amongst linguists over the reasoning behind it.
  • In 2012, Gervain published work which tested babies at two and three days old and discovered that brain activity peaked with reduplicated syllables. But this does not explain why so many of the first words contain variegated syllables.
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David Crystal

  • David Crystal argues that children recognise that their parents get very excited when they say the ‘ma’ and ‘da’ syllable and as a result, increase the frequency they say this.
  • But this does not constitute understanding. He states that it will be many months before the child can link their production of ‘mama’ to the concept of the maternal caregiver.

Grammatical and Lexis Words

It is important to distinguish between different types of lexis. In particular, grammatical and lexical words.

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Lexical words

  • Lexical words (sometimes called content or open-class words) carry some form of meaning.
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Grammatical words

  • Grammatical words (sometimes called function words or closed words) serve a cohesive purpose in holding the sentence together.
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Lexical vs grammatical words

  • Lexical and grammatical words are divided by word class.

Jump to other topics

1Children's Language Development

1.1Stages of Development

1.1.1A Child's First Year & Consonant Acquisition

1.1.2Consonant Acquisition

1.1.3Beginning Stages of Language

1.1.4Lexical Development

1.1.5Stages of Development

1.1.6Grammatical Constructions

1.2Theories of Language Development

1.2.1Behaviourism

1.2.2Interactionism

1.2.3Interactionism 2

1.2.4Nativism

1.2.5Chomsky

1.2.6Cognitivism

1.2.7Social Constructionism

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Beginning Stages of Language

Stages of Development