Chapter 9. Invariance in variation: frequency and neighbourhood density as predictors of vocabulary size

International audienceThis article examines the influence of word frequency (WF) and neighbourhood density (ND) in vocabulary acquisition of French-speaking children. Data were collected through the French version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. A regression analysis based on 462 children aged between 16 and 30 months who have acquired at least 5 words revealed that ND and WF together predicted 45% of the variance in vocabulary size, with ND and WF uniquely accounting for 32.2% and 12.8% of that variance respectively. The same analysis was done with nouns and predicates only. For no uns, the model predicted 64.6% of the variance whereas for predicates, the size of predicate vocabulary was not correlated with either of the two variables