In the beginning was the word A study of monolingual and bilingual children’s lexicons Pernille Hansen Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo Dissertation submitted for the degree of PhD December 2016 © Pernille Hansen, 2017 Series of dissertations submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. This document was created with LATEX 2ε; the individual papers were created with Microsoft Word (2010). Figures were created with TikZ (Tantau, 2013), ggplot2 (Wickham, 2016) and Microsoft Excel (2010). Printed on Nordic Ecolabel–awarded paper in Oslo, Norway by 07 Media. Abstract All words have inherent properties linked to their form, meaning and usage patterns affecting when they are acquired and how easily they are processed. As languages and cultures differ, words with equivalent meanings may be acquired at different ages across languages. Cross- linguistic research and assessment must take such differences into account; this issue is particu- larly important for a valid assessment of multilingual children. In addition, children’s language acquisition is influenced by their dispositions and personal preferences as well as their linguistic and sociocultural environment. This dissertation asks how linguistic factors may account for the composition of monolingual and bilingual children’s lexicons, and whether a tool that does take such factors into account can be expected to yield comparable results across different groups of bilinguals. It explores data on lexical development and tests two new assessment tools designed to provide a valid assessment of bilingual children’s language skills; one of these tools is also used to profile the children’s language background (exposure and use). The dissertation documents common patterns as well as cross-linguistic differences in chil- dren’s first words. It shows that lexical properties must be taken into account in any linguistic assessment that strives for comparability across languages. Furthermore, it confirms the prom- inent roles of type and token frequency on the lexicon, and underlines that studies of frequency effects and assessment tools aiming to account for such effects must pay attention to the source of frequency data. It confirms that a new lexical assessment tool that takes into account for lex- ical properties does yield comparable results across languages. It may however not be sensitive enough to capture early stages of language shift. The results are in accordance with usage-based theories of language and language acquisition. The dissertation contributes with a new measure of lexical development and new knowledge about lexical effects within and across languages. iii Sammendrag Alle ord har iboende egenskaper knyttet til form, betydning og bruksmønster som påvirker når barn lærer dem og hvor lette de er å prosessere. På grunn av forskjeller mellom ulike språk og kulturer vil ord med ekvivalente betydninger kunne tilegnes ved forskjellig alder innen ulike språk. Tverrspråklig forskning og kartlegging må ta høyde for slike forskjeller; dette er kanskje spesielt viktig for en gyldig kartlegging på tvers av språk hos flerspråklige barn. Barns forut- setninger, individuelle preferanser og språklige og sosiokulturelle miljø vil også påvirke språk- tilegnelsen deres. Denne avhandlinga spør hvordan språklige faktorer kan gjøre rede for orda i ordforrådet til enspråklige og flerspråklige barn, og undersøker om vi kan forvente at et verktøy som konstrueres på bakgrunn av språklige faktorer vil gi sammenlignbare resultater hos ulike grupper flerspråklige barn. Den utforsker data om leksikalsk utvikling og tester to nye kartleggingsverktøy konstruert for å gi en representativ vurdering av de språklige ferdighetene til flerspråklige barn; det ene brukes også til å profilere barnas språkbakgrunn (input og bruk). Avhandlinga avdekker både tverrspråklige mønstre og tverrspråklige forskjeller i barns første ord. Den viser at enhver kartlegging av ordforrådet som søker å være sammenlignbar på tvers av språk må ta hensyn til egenskaper ved orda. Videre bekrefter den at type- og tegnfrekvens spiller en viktig rolle for ordforrådet, og den understreker at både studier av frekvenseffekter og kartleggingsverktøy som søker å ta høyde for slike effekter, må være oppmerksomme på hvor frekvensdataene kommer fra. Avhandlinga bekrefter at et verktøy som bygger på ords egenskaper kan gi sammenlignbare resultater på tvers av språk, men funnene indikerer at dette verktøyet muligens ikke er sensitivt nok til å fange opp et språkskifte i emning. Resultatene stemmer overens med en bruksbasert tilnærming til språk og språktilegnelse. Avhandlinga bidrar med et nytt mål på leksikalsk utvikling og ny kunnskap om leksikalske ef- fekter innenfor og på tvers av språk. iv In memory of a pioneer and inspirer: Professor Inger Moen (1940–2015) v Acknowledgements I am infinitely grateful for the the excellent advice, whole-hearted support and unlimited enthusi- asm I have received from my two supervisors, Hanne Gram Simonsen and Nina Gram Garmann. Thank you for writing with me and standing by me, and for encouraging me to embark on this journey in the first place. I would like to thank my two supervisors again, along with Mari- anne Lind, for hiring me to help develop the database Norwegian Words, the corpus Garmann- Norwegian and the assessment tools CLT and PaBiQ; each of these jobs helped me arrive at the topic of this project. I am very thankful to be a part of the COST Action IS0804; the close collaboration with Ewa Haman and Magdalena Łuniewska has been particularly fruitful. A COST-funded short- term scientific mission allowing Magdalena Łuniewska to visit us in 2012 provided a flying start for the project. I would like to thank children, parents and day-care staff for participating, and Elisabeth Holm and Ingeborg Sophie Bjønness Ribu for collecting much of the data and being great sparring partners. I would also like to express my gratitude to Hanne Gram Simonsen and Kristian Emil Kristoffersen for sharing the Norwegian CDI norms, and to Anders Nøklestad at the Text Laboratory for help with the Norwegian CDS frequency list. Dorthe Bleses agreed to be my mid-way evaluator, and I am thankful for her useful comments at an early stage of the writing process. Annick De Houwer and Kjersti Fløttum gave very useful feedback on a manuscript that led to the two last papers, Fritz Albregtsen contributed with helpful feedback on parts of the synopsis and Anna Sara Romøren helped brainstorming on the title. The Research Council of Norway partly supported this PhD project financially through its funding of Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (MultiLing, project number 223265). I am grateful to MultiLing for funding several conference trips, for hosting the work- shop Assessing Assessment Tools: Language development in bilingual preschoolers in October 2014, and for inviting Magdalena Łuniewska for a second visit in April 2015. I would also like to thank my fellow MultiLingers for enriching discussions and whole-hearted support, and in particular Monica Knoph, Ye¸simSevinç, Hanna Andresen and Veronica Pajaro for providing a positive working environment. The research group in Clinical Linguistics and Language Acquis- ition have been an inspiring and supportive community throughout the last six years, and for that I am grateful to both current and former members of the group. I would also like to thank my parents and my extended family for eager discussions about everything under the sun, and for raising me to believe in myself. Last, but by no means least: Thomas, I am eternally grateful for your interest in discussing statistics, for your help with this document and for making sure I stay sane. You are a lifesaver! Oslo, December 2016 Pernille Hansen vii Contents I Synopsis 1 1 Introduction 3 1.1 Why the lexicon? . .3 1.2 The form and meaning of linguistic units . .5 1.3 Language input and lexical development . .6 1.3.1 Input and bilingual lexical development . .6 1.4 The road to valid assessment across languages . .7 1.5 The aims of this dissertation . .8 1.6 Outline of the dissertation . .9 2 Theoretical framework 11 2.1 A usage-based theory of language . 11 2.1.1 Schematicity in form . 12 2.1.2 Schematicity in meaning . 13 2.1.3 Grammar from schematicity in form and meaning . 14 2.1.4 Speech recognition and speech production . 16 2.2 A usage-based view of language acquisition . 17 2.3 The word . 18 2.3.1 Word classes . 19 2.3.2 Children’s acquisition of word classes . 20 2.4 The bilingual lexicon . 21 2.4.1 Bilingual lexical acquisition . 22 3 Previous research 25 3.1 Form . 26 3.1.1 The word-initial consonant . 26 3.1.2 Overall word shape . 27 3.1.3 Phonological neighbourhood density . 28 3.2 Meaning . 29 3.2.1 Word class . 29 3.2.2 Imageability . 30 3.3 Entrenchment . 31 3.4 Consequences for cross-linguistic assessment . 32 3.4.1 Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks . 34 3.5 Summary . 37 ix 4 Methods 39 4.1 Measuring children’s lexicons . 39 4.2 Sample size and homogeneity . 41 4.3 An overview of study A . 43 4.4 An overview of study B . 44 4.5 Statistical analyses . 45 5 Main features of the papers 47 5.1 Paper I . 47 5.1.1 Comments to paper I . 48 5.2 Paper II . 49 5.2.1 Comments to paper II . 50 5.3 Paper III . 51 5.3.1 Comments to paper III . 52 5.4 Paper IV . 52 5.4.1 Comments to paper IV . 53 6 General discussion 55 6.1 Linguistic factors . 55 6.1.1 Language-specific or specific to children? .