Department of Speech and Language Pathology, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia.
Doctoral Program in Hearing, Language and Speech Disorders, Department of Speech and Language Pathology, University of Zagreb, Croatia.
Infant Behav Dev. 2021 May;63:101552. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101552. Epub 2021 Mar 23.
Cross-linguistic studies can provide information about general and language specific features of language development, but relatively few such studies are available in literature. The main aim of the present study was to investigate, from a cross-linguistic perspective, the roles of the internal factor of gender and external factors of birth order and parental education level on the development of language in 2-year-old children. We examined 351 children growing up in three European language contexts: Croatian (N = 104), Estonian (N = 141) and Finnish (N = 106). Information on lexical skills and word combination ability was collected using the short form of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories and the influence of background factors on these aspects of language development was investigated. No significant differences were found in lexical skills or word combination ability among the three language groups. These aspects of language development varied significantly with gender, but not with external factors. Our findings suggest that internal factors may influence early language development more than external factors.
从跨语言的角度研究性别这一内部因素以及出生顺序和父母受教育水平这两个外部因素对 2 岁儿童语言发展的作用。我们研究了在三种欧洲语言环境中成长的 351 名儿童：克罗地亚（n = 104）、爱沙尼亚（n = 141）和芬兰（n = 106）。使用麦克阿瑟 - 贝茨交际发展量表的简短形式收集了词汇技能和单词组合能力的信息，并调查了背景因素对语言发展这些方面的影响。在这三个语言群体中，词汇技能或单词组合能力方面没有发现显著差异。这些语言发展方面在性别上差异显著，但不受外部因素的影响。我们的研究结果表明，内部因素可能比外部因素更能影响早期语言发展。
