PURPOSE:
verifying howthe initial lexical acquisition occurs in children with typical development, regarding to types and tokens of the lexical items. Furthermore, one wants to verify if the noun bias hypothesis occurs, and in what version, strong or weak.
METHODS:
the sample consisted of 20 children, male and female, with typical language development. Thisresearch covered ages from 1:0 to 1:11 (years: months) divided in three age groups(1:0 - 1:3;29, 1:4 - 1:7;29, 1:8 - 1:11;29). Audio data from spontaneous speech were collected, and after, lexicalanalysis was performed regarding to types and tokens produced. The Statistical tests Mann Whitney; Kruskal - Wallis and Wilcoxon were used, with significance level p< 0.05.
RESULTS:
no statistical significance was found to the variables regarding to sex. However, statistical difference was found between the age group 1 in relation to 2 and 3 to the majority of variables. Furthermore, one verified prevalence of content words in the age groups 2 and 3. The prevalence of nouns over verbs in all age groups was observed.
CONCLUSION:
the initial lexical acquisition in children with typical development occurs gradually according to the increase of age. In this period the sex variable doesn't influence in the linguistic performance. Furthermore, the noun bias hypothesis was confirmed in its weak version, confirming the thesis that inspired this research.
Child; Language Development; Vocabulary
