Lexical Development
English Language: AQA A Level, topic 2.1.7
Lexical Development
In 2010, the National Literacy Trust published a list of top 12 most common first words:
12 most common first words
- Dada
- Mama
- Cat
- Dog
- More
- Baby
- Ball
- Duck
- Teddy
- Milk
- Gran
- Again
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.
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
One thing you can look at in your exam is the different types of lexis being used. In particular, aim to consider uses of grammatical and lexical words.
Lexical words
- Lexical words (sometimes called content or open-class words) carry some form of meaning.
Grammatical words
- Grammatical words (sometimes called function words or closed words) serve a cohesive purpose in holding the sentence together.
Lexical vs grammatical words
- Lexical and grammatical words are divided by word class.
Test yourself on Lexical Development
Which of the following word classes is grammatical?
Which of the following word classes is lexical?