A Study of Expressive Vocabulary of Korean Children at 1;1- 2;7 Years of Age

Choi, Eunhee; Seo, Sangkyu; Pae, Soyoung

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2001;6(1): 1-16.

Eunhee Choi^` , Sangkyu Seo^` , and Soyoung Pae^`

최은희(Eunhee Choi)| 서상규(Sangkyu Seo)| 배소영(Soyoung Pae)

ABSTRACT

The main purpos es of this s tudy ar e to inves tigate the mean number of vocabulary of Korean childr en aged 1;1- 2 ;6, us ing the par ent r epor t , and to examine which hypothes is the ear ly vocabulary acquis ition of Kor ean childr en s uppor ts , either language - univers ality hypothes is or language - specificity hypothes is . One hundr ed and eighty s ubjects , aged 1;1 to 2 ;6, s ectioned in s ix gr oups with age - intervals of thr ee months , par ticipated in the s tudy . We ex amined the mean numbers of vocabulary items and the pr oduction pr opor tions in terms of age incr eas e. The r atio of nouns as agains t that of pr edicates was als o inves tigated. The r es ults showed that noun spur t was fas ter than that of pr edicates . The total number of nouns and their pr opor tions to total wor ds wer e far gr eater than thos e of verbs in all age gr oups. It was als o found that the pr opor tions of nouns wer e mor e than 50% r elative to the pr opor tions of verbs. The r es ults of the s tudy definitely s uppor ted the language - univers ality hypothes is.