Speech and Language Therapy, Department of Health Sciences, European University Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Department of Speech and Language Therapy, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece.
Folia Phoniatr Logop. 2021;73(4):277-288. doi: 10.1159/000507621. Epub 2020 Jun 18.
BACKGROUND/AIMS: The number of different words (NDW), an essential measure of lexical diversity, is extremely valuable towards providing data regarding children's language development. However, in Cyprus, practitioners are deprived of the opportunity to utilize NDW, as no normative data exist for toddlers who speak Cypriot Greek (CYG).
The language samples of 36 monolingual CYG-speaking toddlers (aged 36, 40, 44, and 48 months) with a typical course of language development were collected and quantitatively analyzed. Based on the language sample analysis, we ascertained typical NDW values at the aforementioned ages and tested through a linear mixed-effects model whether gender and age affected NDW.
The results showed that age significantly predicted NDW increase; gender did not emerge as a significant predictor of NDW, but this may be due to the small statistical power.
This study intends to provide the first step towards longitudinal investigation of the level of NDW for CYG-speaking children with a typical course of language development. The provided data, which could serve as preliminary norms, may be used - under some restrictions for the time being - during language assessment. Moreover, these acquired data could contribute to the development of an NDW database for diverse CYG-speaking populations of different age ranges in the future.
背景/目的：词汇多样性的重要衡量标准——不同单词数量（NDW），对于提供儿童语言发展数据极其有价值。然而，在塞浦路斯，由于缺乏说塞浦路斯希腊语（CYG）的幼儿的规范数据，从业者无法利用 NDW。
本研究收集并定量分析了 36 名语言发育正常的单语 CYG 幼儿（36、40、44 和 48 月龄）的语言样本。基于语言样本分析，我们确定了上述年龄的典型 NDW 值，并通过线性混合效应模型检验了性别和年龄是否影响 NDW。
结果表明，年龄显著预测 NDW 的增加；性别并未成为 NDW 的显著预测因素，但这可能是由于统计功效较小。
本研究旨在为具有典型语言发育过程的 CYG 儿童的 NDW 水平进行纵向研究提供第一步。所提供的数据目前可在语言评估中使用（暂时受到一些限制），作为初步规范。此外，这些获得的数据未来可能有助于为不同年龄段的不同 CYG 语言群体开发 NDW 数据库。
