Stylistic variations in the early lexical development of young Putonghua-speaking children

Earlier studies of children's lexical acquisition tended to focus either on the rate or the style of acquisition. More recently, researchers have moved their attention to the individual differences in the stylistic variations in children's lexical composition. Most of the studies of children's lexical development in languages other than English, however, have only copied earlier studies of English-speaking children. There is very little published work on the individual differences in the stylistics of lexical development. The current paper presents findings from a cross-sectional study of 87 Putonghua-speaking children's early vocabulary development, carried out in Beijing, China. The study was based on the Profile of Communicative Development of Chinese Children (Chinese CD), a MacArthur CDI-style parental report instrument, which is being developed by the authors. The children were aged between 1;6 and 4;0. Considerable individual variations in the use of different categories of lexical items have been found, which may be related to the culturally specific style of language teaching and learning and the typological features of the language