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. 2022 Jan;49(1):114-130.
doi: 10.1017/S030500092000077X. Epub 2021 Feb 10.

Multilingual toddlers' vocabulary development in two languages: Comparing bilinguals and trilinguals

Stephanie L Côté  1   2 , Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero  1   2 , Krista Byers-Heinlein  1   2
Affiliations

Multilingual toddlers' vocabulary development in two languages: Comparing bilinguals and trilinguals

Stephanie L Côté et al. J Child Lang. 2022 Jan.

Abstract

Many children grow up hearing multiple languages, learning words in each. How does the number of languages being learned affect multilinguals' vocabulary development? In a pre-registered study, we compared productive vocabularies of bilingual (n = 170) and trilingual (n = 20) toddlers aged 17-33 months growing up in a bilingual community where both French and English are spoken. We hypothesized that because trilinguals have reduced input in French and English due to time spent hearing their third language, they would have smaller French-English vocabulary sizes than bilinguals. Trilinguals produced on average 2/3 of the number of words in these languages that bilinguals did: however, this difference was not statistically robust due to large levels of variability. Follow-up analyses did, however, indicate a relationship between input quantity and vocabulary size. Our results indicate that similar factors contribute to vocabulary development across toddlers regardless of the number of languages being acquired.

Keywords: Language Input; Multilinguals; Vocabulary Development.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Bar graphs showing total vocabulary scores (English + French) across pairwise-matched trilinguals and bilinguals with data from 18-month-old trilingual toddler who participated in two studies. Lines connect matched participants.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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