This study aimed to investigate the occurrences of different grammatical categories in 21 children (18 to 41 months) in situations of spontaneous speech with their peers and compare these data with studies that employ the observation of adult/child interaction in the context of elicited speech. Each child was videotaped during 15 minutes interacting with classmates. It happened for five times with intervals of one month between them. Records were joined into four groups. The most frequent grammatical categories in all age groups were verbs and nouns. The frequency of different types of verbs and nouns were equivalent among younger groups, but verbs were more frequently used in older groups. We discuss the role of observation context and the method of data sampling.
Language acquisition; verbal interaction; preschool age children