engleski

Early acquisition of Croatian: Different ways to master the first language

Numerous studies of first language acquisition showed that except for similarities in the course of language development across different children there are also marked individual differences in the language onset, rate and style of language acquisition. While the above mentioned similarities are most probably caused by structural characteristics of a given language, individual differences could be result of many various factors. The aim of this study is to present and analyze peculiarities of early acquisition of Croatian in two healthy subjects differing in the onset of productive vocabulary, comprehension level and rate of language development. The subjects, a girl and a boy, have been longitudinally followed since the preverbal stage until the age of 16 mnth (girl) and 21 mnth (boy) respectively. The subjects have shown differences in language development with the girl being an early talker and showing referential style and the boy being a late talker showing some characteristics of expressive style of language acquisition. Language development has been followed by means of KORALJE Communicative Development Inventories (Croatian version of MacArthur CDI): Words and Gestures and Word and Sentences, with the former allowing separate recording of comprehension and production as well as early language precursors. The latter enables monitoring of language production and of grammatical development. Apart from the CDI, the comprehension was assessed by the Reynell Developmental Receptive Language Scale. Similarities and differences between the subjects in vocabulary composition were analyzed with respect to comprehension versus production . Other aspects that were analyzed include: nonverbal communicational characteristics of the subjects during the preverbal stages, onset time and rate of acquisition of different lexical types, their proportions within vocabulary and grade of dissociation between receptive and expressive vocabulary. Characteristics of early grammar onset were also part of the analysis.

language acquisition; Croatian

nije evidentirano