Talk:Vocabulary development

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:31, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

a start
Cleanup req'd: Could be an interesting article, however is unfinished and needs wikification. Clym 14:58, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I started a bit of a cleanup of the present text, such as it is, but if someone wants a resources to work from to add some meat to this bone of an article, this article might be a good place to start: http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html

The 10,000 word figure seems too low, probably someone's guess and not based on any research, and any number average must increase over a person's lifetime, so if it is a correct average, it should be linked to an age range. --Fuhghettaboutit 04:20, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

"I'm not knowledgeable about vocabulary development, but the math doesn't add up. If children learn an average of 5.5 words per day (2000 words per year) from 18 months to grade 1, then 20 words per day (7300 words per year) from grade 1 to grade 5, how can the average vocabulary for an adult be only 17,200 words? If children forget over half of all of those words as they learn them, then that needs said, so that the vocabulary is not growing at those rates. The rate of vocabulary growth would then be the rate that new words are learned minus the rate that learned words are forgotten."67.246.41.230 (talk) 22:53, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions for improvement

 * The definition of Vocabulary Development could be elaborated
 * The use and progress of infants' vocabulary should be discussed. For example, how children may categorize items to fit under a general term, even though it may not mean that (i.e., an animal with four legs and a tail is called a dog, even if it is a cat)
 * The role that gesture and babbling may play in developing vocabulary, or the role of pointing to develop vocabulary (i.e., by pointing at an object, an adult may say the name of the object, which could expand the child's vocabulary)
 * Citations and generally more research and resources are needed to give the article greater breadth and to provide more recent research (1987 is almost 25 years ago)
 * It is unclear if there is a difference between adults' speaking vocabulary and their written/reading vocabulary, as it says that more vocabulary is used in writing, but the average working vocabulary is much smaller
 * The article touches on, but provides no useful information about continuing vocabulary development — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eheiberg (talk • contribs) 18:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

The article on vocabulary development is very short, and focuses on what types of vocabulary develop instead of how this vocabulary develops. The article makes claims that are unsupported currently. Below are some points that could be addressed in order to improve the article, in addition to the useful suggestions above. Alindsay9 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC).
 * The article suggests that vocabulary is built "by instinct, with little effort." This claim needs support. As well, if different theories of vocabulary development exist, they should be introduced here in order to give a sense of any controversy/consensus in the field.
 * The article does not address factors that might influence the rate of vocabulary development. These factors might include joint attention, who speaks to the child (and when), the role of early input, exposure to literacy, and whether the majority of words heard by the child are referential or communicative in nature. Awareness of these factors could be useful for parents and caregivers.
 * The article could address when vocabulary production typically begins to develop in children, from their first word to their "word spurt" at a 50 word productive vocabulary.
 * Also of interest would be the types of words first produced by children, for example, nouns.
 * Lastly, the article makes mention of "speaking vocabulary." This term could be elaborated or revised to clearly include production in alternative languages, such as American Sign Language.

In addition to the suggestions above this article would also benefit from further elaboration on how one expands on their vocabulary. It may be beneficial to parents to learn ways to help their children's vocabularies develop. It would also be interesting to discuss the effects of a above or below average vocabulary as the child develops. --Asia44 (talk) 05:53, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Also, this article is very short, and needs more contents, citations/references. Julietbee (talk) 21:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Potential bibliography
Some possible references include:

Hoff, E. (2005). Language Experience and Language Milestones During Early Childhood. In K. McCartney & D. Phillips, (Eds.). Blackwell handbook of early childhood development. Blackwell Publishing, Blackwell Reference Online.

Julietbee (talk) 21:13, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The author focused on children's experience in language development, and how it influences their language acquisition or vocabulary development at certain developmental stages. Julietbee (talk) 21:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Teinonen, T., Aslin, R., Alku, P.,  & Csibra, G. (2008). Visual speech contributes to phonetic learning in 6-month-old infants. Cognition, 108 850-855.

This article focuses on visual speech and distributional learning of phoneme contrasts among 6-month-old infants. The aim of the study was to determine whether seen articulations improve an infant’s ability to discriminate phonemes, thus playing a role in phonetic category learning.The result indicates that seen articulations actually enhances infants’ ability to discriminate sounds, and may also contribute to infants’ ability to learn phoneme boundaries.

Harvy, M. & Nazzi, T. (2009). Better Processing of Consonantal Over Vocalic Information in Word Learning at 16 Months of Age. Infancy, 14 439-456.

This article highlights on the roles of consonants and vowels in lexical acquisition and processing.

Mani, N. & Plunkett, K. (2010). Twelve-Month-Olds Know Their Cups From Their Keps and Tups. Infancy, 15 445-470.

This article focuses on the develpment of 12-month-olds' sensitivity to different kinds of vowel and consonant mispronounciations of familiar words and how these sensitivities might be influenced by their vocabulary size.

Julietbee (talk) 09:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Some potential sources:

Chan, C. C. Y., Tardif, T., Chen, J., Pulverman, R. B., Zhu, L., & Meng, X. (2011). English- and Chinese-learning infants map novel labels to objects and actions differently. Developmental Psychology, 47(5), 1459-1471. DOI: 10.1037/a0024049
 * Authors found that English and Mandarin-learning infants mapped novel words to objects and actions differently at ages 14 and 18 months.

Ganger, J., & Brent, M. R. (2004). Reexamining the vocabulary spurt. Developmental Psychology, 40(4), 621-632. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.40.4.621
 * Ganger & Brent used a longitudinal study to analyze the rate of vocabulary growth in 38 children, finding that very few children actually experienced a 'spurt' in vocab development.

Hollich, G., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2007). Young children associate novel words with complex objects rather than salient parts. Developmental Psychology, 43(5), 1051-1061. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.43.5.1051
 * Authors argue that infants map novel words to whole objects rather than objects' parts.

Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M., & Lyons, T. (1991). Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology, 27(2), 236-248.
 * Huttenlocher et al. examine the influence of parental speech and gender upon vocabulary growth.

Jaswel, V. K., & Markman, E. M. (2003). The relative strength of indirect and direct word learning. Developmental Psychology, 39(4), 745-760. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.39.4.745
 * Authors performed 3 experiments, and results supported the notion that infant comprehension is similar when words are learned directly or indirectly.

Locke, J. L. (1995). Development of the capacity for spoken language. In P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney (Eds.) The handbook of child language (pp. 278-302). Oxford: Blackwell.
 * Locke's article may have useful information about the precursors to vocabulary development/word naming. For example, helplessness and attachment to caregivers, a focus on eye gaze, and babbling, which is often expanded upon by caregivers. Locke also refers to referential vs. expressive children (p. 298).

Luyster, R., & Lord, C. (2009). Word learning in children with autism spectrum disorders. Developmental Psychology, 45(6), 1774-1786. DOI: 10.1037/a0016223
 * This looks like an interesting article. Authors address individual variability in children with autism spectrum disorder and suggest that some of these children effectively use social cues for word-object mapping and word learning tasks.

Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct: How the mind creates language (pp. 262-296). New York: William Morrow.
 * Pinker discusses word production (p. 266) and individual variation in naming objects or using memorized scripts for communication.

Tardif, P., Fletcher, P., Liang, W., Zhang, Z., Kaciroti, N., & Marchman, V. A. (2008). Baby's first 10 words. Developmental psychology, 44(4), 929-938. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.44.4.929
 * Authors discuss cross-linguistic parental reports of their children's first words.

Tomasello, M., & Farrar, M. J. (1986). Joint attention and early language. Child Development, 57, 1454-1463.
 * Authors provide support for the notion that successful joint-attention (and the types of object references made in joint attention) may be related to later language development.

Alindsay9 (talk)

Lew-Williams, C., & Saffran, J. R. (2012). All words are not created equal: Expectations about word length guide infant statistical learning. Cognition, 122(2), 241-246. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2011.10.007

Graf Estes, K., Edwards, J., & Saffran, J. R. (2011). Phonotactic Constraints on Infant Word Learning. Infancy, 16(2), 180-197. doi:10.1111/j.1532-7078.2010.00046.x

Yeung, H., & Werker, J. F. (2009). Learning words’ sounds before learning how words sound: 9-Month-olds use distinct objects as cues to categorize speech information. Cognition, 113(2), 234-243. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.08.010

Trehub, S. E., & Shenfield, T. (2007). Acquisition of early words from single-word and sentential contexts. Developmental Science, 10(2), 190-198. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00545.x

Werker, J. F., Fennell, C. T., Corcoran, K. M., & Stager, C. L. (2002). Infants' Ability to Learn Phonetically Similar Words: Effects of Age and Vocabulary Size. Infancy, 3(1), 1-30. doi:10.1207/15250000252828226

--Asia44 (talk) 01:23, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Markman, E. M. (n.d.) CONSTRAINTS ON WORD LEARNING: SPECULATIONS ABOUT THEIR NATURE, ORIGINS, AND DOMAIN SPECIFICITY. http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/markman.lang.html
 * provides a brief overview of theory regarding constraints on word learning

Ma, W., Golinkoff, R. M., Houston, D., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2011). Word learning in infant- and adult-directed speech. Language Learning and Development. 7. 209-225.
 * The use of IDS and ADS in infants' word learning

Modularity and constraints in language and cognition: Volume 25 (1992) Eds. M. R. Gunnar & M. Maratos. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers. Hillsdale: NJ
 * A book containining a number of chapters that focus on constraints in language learning

Woodward, A.L., & Markman, E.M. Handbook of child psychology: Volume 2: Cognition, perception, and language.(pp. 371-420)Hoboken, NJ, US: John Wiley & Sons IncDamon, William (Ed), (1998). xxvi, 1030 pp.
 * Handbook provides a variety of topics on child psychology

Language acquisition and conceptual development. (2001). Eds. M. Bowerman, & S.C. Levinson. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge: UK.
 * Book with chapter on word learning

Golinkoff, R.M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Bloom, L., Smith, L.B., Woodward, A.L., Ahktar, N., Tomasello, M., Hollich, G. (2000). Becoming a Word Learner: A Debate on Lexical Acquisition. Oxford Univeristy Press. Cary: NC
 * Book on word learning. Discusses a number of topics related to this (available as online book through U of A library) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eheiberg (talk • contribs) 20:51, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Figuring out 'who's doing what'
I've been trying to sort all of the suggestions on the talk page so far into some possible categories so that we can discuss tomorrow who wants to work on what. This is what I was thinking so far, just based on the current comments/sources:

1. Defining vocabulary development/word naming -identifying factors that might 'set the stage' for this development, ex. eye gaze, helplessness, attachment, innate vs. learning mechanisms, exposure to speech in utero...

2. What is the general developmental sequence for vocabulary? -first words to develop -does literature support a 'word spurt?' -are children typically referential or expressive, and how does this influence later development? -how is vocab developed at school and across the lifespan?

3. Is vocab development influenced by input/experience? -does rate of input, type of input, and who talks to the child/when matter? -what is the role of joint attention? -what is the role of gesture/pointing? -what is the role of exposure to literacy/picture books? -does it matter whether words are learned directly or indirectly?

4. Individual variation -how does vocab development vary based upon gender? -how do children with autism, developmental disorders, or ear infections experience vocabulary development? -how does vocab development vary across languages?

Please revise the categories or add to help improve them. : ) Alindsay9 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:17, 8 February 2012 (UTC).

We will focus on word learning and what happens during word learning

Julietbee (talk) 18:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Suitability of sources
Hello everyone! It is very exciting to see activity at this article, and I can't wait to see what the finished version will look like. Having said that, I'm glad that I'm seeing this before you've started work on the article itself; glancing over the sources, it looks like you are collectively in the process of making the Classic Academic Newbie Error. The vast majority of the sources listed here are primary sources - that is, the authors performed experiments and reported their results in academic journals. These are great academic sources, there is no doubt about that; but they are not good sources for an encyclopaedia. The reason for this is that we cannot take these primary sources and hew them together to form a narrative. While the individual parts would not be in doubt, our telling of the story would be original research, which is forbidden in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, and we seek to describe the state of the literature as it is, without making new analyses that haven't yet been published in secondary sources. Furthermore, as anyone can edit Wikipedia, we can't just take it on faith that articles are faithfully outlining the state of any particular field. Instead, all the claims in an article must be verifiable, which means that any claims which are challenged or likely to be challenged should be cited to a reliable source. The upshot of this is that we need to use mostly secondary sources to write our articles, such as literature reviews or textbooks. Secondary sources contain the analyses that we need to link studies together and show their relative importance to the subject, without us having to break the rules regarding original research. Individual studies are a no-no, unless they themselves contain a significant literature review, or if they are only being cited for factual details about the study itself with no analysis. Note that I am not saying that all of the sources above cannot be used; in particular, the Blackwell Handbook of Early Childhood Development looks like an excellent start, and some of the others may include literature reviews which we can use. I also had a quick Google search and found a couple of others, but I am no expert and there are very likely to be better secondary sources out there. Those are just some examples of the kind of thing that it is acceptable to use. Sorry to shoot holes in the work that you have done so far, and please let me know if you have any questions about this. All the best —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 12:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Mr Stradivarius,
 * It is a pleasure to have someone interested in this topic and the work our class is planning. Your comments lead to a very fruitful discussion in class today. I would like to suggest my understanding of the process and see if that clears up any confusion. I understand that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and that articles must adopt a neutral point of view. I also understand that articles should not cite original research nor actively synthesize information to create a novel position. As a professor however, I am much less interested in having my students work on Wikipedia articles if they do not have to read published research articles to gain a more detailed understanding of research in this area. It is my goal that students read widely to develop an understanding of the area and frame their outline and contents for the article from that reading. Many of these articles suggested above will not be pursued and many more not cited in the final work. I have asked them to document their process on the talk page so that they don't duplicate each other's work and so that the Wiki community can see what they are up to. I expect students to read a variety of sources, primary and secondary and present the consensus of the field about word learning and, where appropriate, to indicate what is controversial and outline different positions. They are well aware that they are not writing a traditional academic essay in which they are to posit a thesis and evaluate it in light of the literature. I expect them to use primary sources to do an effective literature review. I hope this reduces your concern about our likelihood of committing the Classic Academic Newbie Error. Let me know if I'm still missing the big picture. Paula Marentette (talk) 23:19, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the reply, Paula. Of course, I wasn't expecting you to post a traditional academic essay on the site, and I apologise if that's how my comment came across. I am aware that you have been putting a lot of work into this behind the scenes in addition to what I can see on the talk page, and I was expecting very good things. What I am pointing out is actually just a small change, in that it won't affect the actual text all that much. However, understanding it will be indispensable in, for example, getting the article accepted to Good Article status. Let me take your outline of the process point by point:
 * "I understand that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and that articles must adopt a neutral point of view". Absolutely.
 * "I also understand that articles should not cite original research nor actively synthesize information to create a novel position." Maybe this is just the way you worded it, but a more accurate way of saying this would be that Wikipedia should not contain original research, nor actively synthesize information to create a novel position. It is perfectly ok to cite original research. I think I should also add a corollary:
 * To prove that they are not original research, any syntheses of individual sources should be verifiable. Syntheses that are challenged or likely to be challenged should be cited to a reliable, secondary source.
 * I think the answer to your question is that while the policies linked above are an inescapable part of Wikipedia and lead to the sourcing practices I outlined above, there is no substitute for a deep understanding of the subject area. We don't simply copy the things that secondary sources say. Indeed, that can lead to problems with close paraphrasing, which in practice is a bigger problem than verifiability. (Paraphrasing sources too closely can amount to copyright violation, which on Wikipedia is grounds for immediate removal of infringing material.) Instead, we are obliged to read all the sources, understand the material, write the article in our own words from the ground up, and then cite any syntheses to secondary sources which have already made those general points. Getting the balance right between verifiability and avoiding close paraphrasing is a tricky business, and is a common stumbling block for all new editors, especially in academic topics. I would say that getting it right actually requires a deeper knowledge of the subject than doing everything from primary sources, as one must not merely be aware of the individual studies and their significance, but must also be aware of the different secondary sources and what arguments they make. Of course, in practice, researchers will use secondary sources to learn about the broad outlines of a subject, and follow that up with deeper reading of primary research papers. The difference between traditional textbooks or literature reviews and Wikipedia is that the former will generally cite the primary sources, whereas the latter requires citations from secondary sources as well. Maybe a good idea to get a feel for how this works in practice is to look at some of our Good Articles and Featured Articles that deal with scientific subjects. One that springs to mind is neurolinguistics, a Good Article. In the reference section there are a mix of primary and secondary sources, and often two sources will be cited at the end of a sentence - the primary source in question, and also the secondary source that discusses its place in the broader field. Also, some sentences are only sourced with primary sources. This may be because the sources themselves review the literature, and we can expect these reviews to be reliable; also, we don't need a citation to say that the sky is blue. However, all of the possibly contentious claims seem to be cited with secondary sources. I hope this answers your questions, and assuages your doubts about the subject knowledge and the reading that will be necessary to make a good article. If there's anything else you would like to ask about, then I'll be glad to help. Best —  Mr. Stradivarius  ♫ 05:29, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Revised Article Components
As discussed earlier, here are some of the components of our revised article: 1. How do children learn words? a. Early word learning, first words, first 50 words b. Vocabulary spurt

2. Forms of words a. Babbling, phonological development

3. Vocabulary development a. What happens during school age (children vocabulary development) [I would consider putting this at the end, in my mind it a nicer chronological narrative, but it is easy enough to wait until the sections are done and then see how you think things fit to make a clear article]

4. How kids sort out meaning a. Constraints b. Reference c. Function (what do kids do with words? Labelling?) [I would not include this here - Paula]

5. Pragmatic a. Function (I think it fits better here than under meaning) the question is what do children DO with words, and that is a pragmatic question of pragmatics [Paula] b. Examples that show that word learning is universal [I think that this is a place that you will be able to find examples in languages other than English]

I hope we all know what we're doing (in terms of the sections). Our lead paragraph should come later after we gather our information and put everything together.

Julietbee (talk) 01:54, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I have made some changes above (and messed up the nice boxes that Julietbee made (I don't see how those happen or I wouldn't have messed them up!). Looks good. Paula Marentette (talk) 04:36, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

This looks great, thanks Julietbee. I agree with Paula, I will leave 'function' out from the 'meaning' section so that Asia44 can deal with it in 'pragmatics.' Alindsay9 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:08, 23 February 2012 (UTC).

Thanks for figuring out some changes in the outline, Paula and Alindsay. I support your comments.

Julietbee (talk) 06:59, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I found this while researching, there is a chapter on communicative intentions and word learning. I wasn't sure if you guys would want to have a look at it. Its chapter 8 in the book.

Eilan, N., Hoerl, C., McCormack, T. and Roessler, J. (2005) Joint attention: Communication and other minds: Issues in philosophy and psychology. New York: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press. Amae2 (talk) 20:20, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Amae. Julietbee (talk) 07:01, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Meaning
Below is an outline of my plan for the 'meaning' section of this article.

The question of meaning, or 'the mapping problem'
In word learning, 'the mapping problem' refers to the question of how infants attach the forms of language to the things that they experience in the world. There are infinite objects, concepts, and actions in the world that words could be mapped onto. So how does the language learner successfully complete the word mapping process? Several answers to this question have been explored. Some theorists believe that children have built-in constraints that help them to map words onto concepts in the world. Social pragmatic theories propose that caregivers act as experts in order to assist children in the word mapping process. Domain-general views, as well as an emergentist coalition model have also been proposed to account for the way that children map meaning onto words.

Theories of constraints
-General overview of theories

Mutual Exclusivity (ME)
-Here, I will discuss the ways in which the ME bias might influence children's word learning, including the disambiguation effect, the correction effect, the rejection effect, and the restriction effect. I will also discuss three confliction positions in the literature regarding the ME bias: that children are biased from the start, that children are never biased, and that children acquire the ME bias during early childhood.

Properties and relations
-In this section, I will discuss the attention that children pay to properties and relations, and, in particular, to the shape of objects.

Whole Object Assumptions
-The literature suggests that children are most likely to apply a label to a whole object, as opposed to a part or property of the whole.

Taxonomic Assumptions
-Children assume that labels pick out categories of objects, rather than those objects and the things that are related to them.

Social pragmatic theories
-This branch of theories argues that the caregiver's gaze, body language, gesture, and smile might help infants acquire clues from context in order to understand the meaning of a word. While the main emphasis is usually placed on the role of adults in guiding the meaning-making process, some theorists have suggested that the child also plays an important role in this interaction.

Joint Attention
-The literature suggests that joint attention is an important mechanism through which children learn to map words-to-world, and vice versa.

Pragmatic Assumptions
-Children may adopt some of the same pragmatic assumptions that adults have in order to learn the meaning of words. I will discuss two examples of these assumptions, conventionality and contrast, here.

Domain-General Views
-This view argues that children do not need principles or constraints in order to successfully develop word-world mappings. Instead, children notice the objects, actions, or events that are most salient in context, and then associate them with the words that are most frequently used in their presence.

Emergentist Coalition Model
-Children map novel labels to novel objects using a variety of cues in their environment. Different cues will come to be utilized by infants as they progress along the path of world-learning.

Summary
-Here, I will suggest that the field reflects controversial perspectives on how children map meaning onto real world events, objects, and actions.

This looks good, Alindsay. Julietbee (talk) 06:49, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Leading Paragraph
Hello!

I came up with a leading paragragh for our article; it's in my sandbox. Please double check and see if it's o.k. You can also make changes if you want. Hopefully, it'll do for now, and we can make changes after all our components are "well done." Thanks.

Julietbee (talk) 05:00, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Great new content. Next stop: editing.
I see that Julietbee deep sixed the brain picture. I agree, it is barely relevant to this article. It would be good though if we can think creatively about vocabulary development and what a reasonable picture might look like. My best ideas at this point are parent and child with book, school-age child reading a book, or a spelling bee picture. The last is a bit lame. Paula Marentette (talk) 18:44, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Lead: Towards the end of the lead paragraph (starting with Iffants learn language rapidly ... " there are a number of things that seem very relevant to language in general but no specific link is made to vocab dev't. I would remove most of that, remember that you aren't writing a detailed essay. Best to only include information directly relevant to the topic and at a general level of interest. Focus on providing a brief mention of what will be developed in the article. This is perhaps what Alindsay9 is recommending above.

Also I recommend that you do not use the researcher names in sentences. Although I am encouraging that in class, here it is likely of little use to the general reader. Removing names will also support making the content more direct and focussed. Marentette (talk) 19:08, 11 March 2012 (UTC) Early Word Learning Nice work Julietbee. I have used your section to demonstrate the kind of editing that needs to happen throughout the article now that the content is present. I copied the opening para beneath as a suggestion of how direct I think we should be. Use it as a guide or copy it in as you see fit. I removed sentences that were commentary or not directly relevant to early word learning. I also reorganized to put things in chronological order. Can you put an internal link to an article on syllables in Wiki? I would include nouns in the list of typical words in the 50 word stage (they are the dominant form). I would put actual words that you are referring to in italics. Two of the sentences "children's understanding of names..." and "At 18 to 24 months..." need citations.

Most children produce their first words after they turn one.[5][6] Infants' first words are normally used in reference to things that are of importance to them, such as objects, people, and relevant actions. Infants' first words are mostly single-syllabic or repeated single syllables (put Hewlitt and Howard in as a ref here). Typically at age 12 to 26 months, children are able to produce about 50 words. At this stage, words such as no, gone, and allgone" constitute a child's vocabulary.[6] Children's understanding of names for objects and people usually preceeds their understanding of words that describe actions and relationships. At 18 to 24 months, children are able to combine two words; three to four-word production appear later when children are able to produce two-word utterances. The number words one and two are the first number words that children learn.[7]

Furthermore, I would include the role of phonological development, babbling, and the vocabulary spurt as subsections within the Early Word Learning section. This will help us manage the table of contents. These sections (as all in the article) will also need the kind of copyediting that I modelled above. Perhaps use different layers of headings as Alindsay9 did.

The phonological dev't section starts off well. The first two sentences are clear. I don't think the phrase "phonetic construct" is meaningful in sentence 3. Say what you mean directly. I thought this section was about production of sounds, but there are a number of vague references to speech perception here. There is an fairly strong article on phonological development already on Wiki. Please link to it and provide only the key information that is necessary so people will be able to understand this article.

Regarding babbling, as you know I have a soft spot in my heart for this topic. I would not use the word gibberish. While Pinker may use it, babbling researchers describe the phenomenon as jargon babbling. In fact, I would use a different source than Pinker for this section altogether. Try any of the research papers by de Boysson Bardies, Oller or Locke or use a textbook. Be clear that when Pinker is discussing deaf children's babbling he means their vocal babbling, but you should really cite Oller's work here. Parents do not babble nor do Deaf parents babble with their hands, even if they are using sign language. Babies babble and babies whose parents sign babble with their hands. There are sources you could cite for that too (Petitto & Marentette, Meier). Deaf parents may use "motherese" but that is quite different and not your topic. Be clear about why babbling is important, how precisely does it help children acquire words? The last sentence isn't linked to any particular point so it seems to float there. Either say more or say less by removing it.

The vocabulary spurt section seems to repeat the info in the Early word learning lead. I thought you were going to specifically address the increased rate of word learning that happens specifically at 18 months. There is much research about this specific age range. Also Eheiberg has a whole section below on vocab dev't in school children.

Marentette (talk) 19:18, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Establishing Meaning Alindsay9, good work here with a thorny theoretical issue. My suggestions for copyediting follow; they build on what I wrote for Julietbee above.

Consider removing the heading right at the beginning of the section. I think your first section does an adequate job of establishing the issue. We need to be consistent about referencing: in or out of sentence? We all need to do the same thing! Is it fair to portray the emergentist coalition approach as one that tries to tie the other disparate theories together. Also how do we be sure to portray this theoretical debate so that Mr. Stradivarius is convinced it is neutral?

Is it possible to condense the theories of constraints to a bullet list with a phrase description for each? This might be more acceptable (since less wordy) to a general reader looking for an overview to this topic. If someone is all excited about this, perhaps each needs its own wiki page?

Do you think overextensions should be mentioned in either Early Word Learning or in Pragmatic sections? I see that Asia44 did mention them in Pragmatics. Is that enough that this bit can be removed?

Mutual exclusivity (possibly the best reason not to pursue my list idea above) also could mention that bilingual children have been shown to use the ME within each language (though clearly not across). This might be a good addition since it is culturally important (most of the world's children are bilingual).

Consider putting the criticisms of constraints up with the lead section so that the content is together followed by (hopefully?) a list. One of my biggest concerns about this article right now is that it is too detailed and too broken up. I can see that under Domain general and social pragmatic (below) it may be advisable to have one heading but hopefully fewer than are currently present.

Under domain general, link to fast mapping and connectionism, (already on wiki). I would consider trying to get all the info under one heading, to keep it visually simple.

Under social pragmatic. Again when you do the copyediting remove the duplication caused by extra headings. I don't think every paragraph needs it own heading. I would define pragmatic or link to Pragmatics so people can have context.

I wonder if your summary would be more useful at the top (given how people read an encyclopedia article) so they can know right way which, if any, of the subsections they care about. Marentette (talk) 20:13, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Pragmatic Development Asia44, Lots of great content here. Thanks for your research. Much of what needs to happen now is copyediting. Every sentence needs to be a sentence with a subject and a predicate! I would start by removing the first heading ( as I've mentioned above, each paragraph does not needs its own heading and I am worried that it breaks up the text too much). In general try to consolidate and have only a few headings in this section. Please begin by informing readers what pragmatics means with respect to vocabulary development.

What does "star information" mean? Why should people curious about vocab dev't care about speech acts? Ditto cognitive development. These are critial things for you to understand to write this article effectively. Consider, however, what the reader needs to know. If this information is important enough to include, you need to be clear about why and how it is relevant to the topic.

Under pragmatic skills (a heading I think you can remove) the object section might benefit from an indication of the age of the children you are talking about. Also this section might need additional citing - perhaps once for each strategy? I suspect you have many possible references for overextension.

Spacial is spelled spatial! I've fixed it but thought you should know.

I don't understand the role of the inference section. Inference is key to children's thinking, but what does it tell us about how children use words?

I wonder if politeness deserves its own section. There may be great wiki articles already about register and polite forms of language to which you could link.

Fathers and siblings section. This is a great idea. Be sure to link explicitly to the content of word learning as that is the focus on this article. You might retitle this something more inclusive. Differential roles of family members. It is really that mothers and fathers have specific roles (it may well be) or is it the difference between primary and supportive caregivers. Recall that we are talking about children at least 18 months but really preschoolers. Be sure that any difference you cite relate to this age group, not the wee babies (where primary caregivers may be more likely to have particular access/roles). At any rate, what is currently there at least requires you to acknowledge that most research is conducted with mother/child pairs.

then - first this then that//than - comparative. I fixed it but want you to know.

Pragmatic Directions. I think this section is very important but too vague at the moment. You have to explain what you mean to a completely naive reader. What does "related by inclusion" mean. What does repaired mean? Marentette (talk) 20:40, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

School-Age Children Eheiberg, good work here. The writing is lovely and the information clear. I focus mostly on how to copyedit to further improve clarity. Consider also how to link to Alindsay9's work above.

Do we need a one sentence transition getting these word-learners into school and discussing the role of school in the new process of dev't? Perhaps sentence 3 is a better first sentence? "many claim" do you need to cite something where that claim is made? I would consider taking the first paragraphs and reordering the sentences to fit a developmental phase. As is, it seems to hop around from age to age.

I have to think about how we can link the very useful description of the role of different context in word learning with other parts of the article. I'll get back to you on that. You and Alindsay9 may be able to come up with your own ideas. I think you two are getting at the same info from two different perspectives.

Memory - can you provide a one sentence description of the dispute? I wonder if this part really need subsections. As a naive reader, is it possible to summarize this in even fewer sentences and have just the section, no parts? I would put the reading chunk before the memory chunk. In fact I would consider introducing reading and conversation as key means of vocab dev't in the school age children in the opening paragraph of this section. Then you could discuss each and make the context section in reference to them. The memory part can come in at the end. Consider it at any rate. Marentette (talk) 21:03, 11 March 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marentette (talk • contribs)

I also shrunk the Table of Contents to reduce how much it shows on the main page. I would like to remove that but thought I'd put it in for now until the sections get collated. You can change the code if you edit the main page, it is under the lead paragraph. Marentette (talk) 04:33, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, Paula. I think I deleted the code by accident. Sorry about that.

Julietbee (talk) 05:43, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Anyone feel free to edit my section and let me know if anything doesn't make sense. I can edit someone else's section if they are ready.--Asia44 (talk) 01:48, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Possible pictures
I have been thinking about an image for this article. What you do you think of this one:, or this one: ? This one is interesting:. Finally here is a pic. None of these are perfect, but they convey some aspects of the article. I think my choices would be the first early in article and possibly the last in the section about school age children.

I assume because they came from wikimedia commons they will be fairly easy to use. Something to consider. Paula Marentette (talk) 04:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

These are great, I especially like the first one. Alindsay9 (talk) 22:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree and I think the first one fits the page best out of all of them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.158.244.231 (talk) 02:53, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I put the girl reading in the beginning and the kids at school in the School aged children section. Let me know if it is ok or if you have better caption ideas. I can change size and placement if needed.--Asia44 (talk) 19:11, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Page numbers
Hi everyone, great progress on the article! It's looking so much better than it did a few weeks ago. I have a request for some of your citations: when you are citing books, could you include the page numbers? We usually include page numbers when books or journal articles are so long that finding the right page would be a significant effort. You can do this by using the rp (reference pages) template with your existing citation style, or by using the sfn (short footnote) template and having a separate bibliography section. (You can find help on the latter option at Help:Shortened footnotes.) Let me know which you want to do, and I can help set it up. —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 00:16, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your feedback on our citations, you raised an important point which we discussed amongst ourselves today. In APA, we don't typically cite page numbers, unless we are talking about a book (as opposed to a chapter in a book, or a journal article). However, in a lot of the cases that we have cited books, we have still only used one or two chapters from the book, and so we wonder if it would be redundant to continually cite the same few pages? Instead, we were wondering if it is possible to just add the page numbers into the citation, following the book title. An example is as follows:


 * Clark, E. V. (1993). The lexicon in acquisition (pp. 32-66). New York: Cambridge University Press


 * Please let us know if this seems acceptable, or if you have further suggestions for improvement? Thanks again! Alindsay9 (talk) 00:07, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * In that case, it looks like using short footnotes would be the best way of doing things. If you use short footnotes to cite the same pages more than once, then it lumps the citations together to avoid redundancy. You can see the way this works on the page already, with the blue letters next to the citations in the references section. I recommend the sfn template for this, as it saves a lot of bother if you need to delete references or move text around. I'll have a little go at getting it set up. —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 00:44, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for setting up the short footnotes! Alindsay9 (talk) 15:07, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * No problem! I thought that would be the easiest way to show you what I was talking about. :) If you add more sources to the bibliography, remember to use the harv parameter. If you include this, then each citation in the references section will link directly to the source in the bibliography when you click on it. And if you have any trouble with using the citation templates, just ask. —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 07:50, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions for further revision!
Wow, this article is really shaping up. You have made a lot of progress in a few short days. I see also that this is in the queue for DYK consideration. That is great, Eheiberg.
 * my comments re needed changes to the phonology and babbling sections still stand.
 * "According to research, however, children are active participants in their own word learning, although caregivers may still play an important role." I am a bit stumped by according to research. Do you mean that all researchers agree that children are active participants?
 * "Domain-general views of vocabulary development, also known as connectionist or associative models..." I didn't catch this earlier, but I'm really thinking about it now. It is absolutely the case that domain-general views are associated with connectionist models (to rearrange your words perversely) but I don't think it is fair to say they are interchangeable labels. Connectionist models are a particular framework and someone might hold a domain-general view and not be using a connectionist model. I think the easiest way to fix this is to remove the phrase "also known as..." but if that seems to extreme, I'm sure it can be reworded.
 * "Instead, children notice the objects, actions, or events that are most," I think a word got lost in the editing. Most what?? salient?
 * "If biases are not present from birth, infants might have to endure lengthy trial and error processes before establishing correct word-world mappings." Isn't it fairly clear from the literature that this does not happen to children? If not, then is this a straw man that the anti-associationists raise, or is there a response to this from the associationist camp? I think the answer is in your next section, right? I think associationists largely embrace the idea that the world supports children's frequency detection abilities because it is inhabited by social being and situations that support children. Is there some way to say that without leaving the domain-general camp dangling? This is a very picky point. I'll reflect more about how important this is.
 * "not all cues are utilized by the infant when they begin the world-learning process" do you mean word-learning?

Paula Marentette (talk) 02:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Asia44. I think you are editing right now so I'll not also edit that area. Once you are done be sure to look at parallel grammatical constructions such as the list "prompting, modelling, verbal reinforcements, pose a hypothetical situation, evaluate retroactively, address the child's comment, or evaluate another person" at the end of the first bullet in pragmatic influences. Either every verb should end in -ing or no verb should end in -ing to be a parallel construction.

Paula Marentette (talk) 03:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Means for vocabulary development

Nice work resolving the presentation of conversation and reading. I think this flows much better and puts the two in a related context instead of in separate sections. I removed the acronyms in the memory section. They seemed to be causing more trouble than they were worth. Also I italicized words used as example words throughout. This section is looking fairly strong to me and I'll leave the rest of the copyediting to your peers. Paula Marentette (talk) 03:18, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Vocabulary Spurt
Hi!

If anyone comes across information on vocabulary spurt at age 18 months, in terms of whether or not there is a spurt/ also among various cultures. I'm still searching, but I haven't come across anything yet. Pinker touched on vocabulary spurt at 18 months, but I'm told his article is not that relevant to this topic. If anyone finds some info in research articles or books, specific page numbers will be very helpful at this moment. Thanks!

Julietbee (talk) 04:53, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Juliet! Try this one! It's a primary source, but you can probably get some information from their literature review, and maybe take a look at some of their references. Hope it helps!

Ganger, J., & Brent, M. R. (2004). Reexamining the vocabulary spurt. Developmental Psychology, 40(4), 621-632. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.40.4.621 Alindsay9 (talk) 05:26, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Alanna!

Julietbee (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:47, 17 March 2012 (UTC).

I`m trying to add some citations, but it seems someone is working on the same page, so it`s not letting me... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Julietbee (talk • contribs) 08:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, that was my fault. The citation bot took ages to run, so it overwrote the latest changes when it finally finished. I've put those changes back in, and now that the bot has been run once it shouldn't happen again. —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 10:17, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

No problem, Mr. Stradivarius. Thanks for letting me know. I have to add two more references to the Bibliography section, and I'll do that right away.

Julietbee (talk) 16:41, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Copy Editing
I didn't make notes in my edits, so I'm just placing them here instead. I did a bit of copy-editing on the entire article - spell check, adding/removing commas, periods, etc., minor changes in tense and adding links to other wikipedia articles. Eheiberg (talk) 22:05, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Ready for GA submission
I think my biggest suggestion is that the lead for this lengthy article is quite short. I think there might need to be more information explicitly linking the contents of the article to the code words: form/meaning/use that are used in the lead. Paula Marentette (talk) 03:40, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I shrunk the TOC again to make it a bit briefer, I think it is detailed enough with 2 levels showing and it doesn't leave too much out.
 * "There are 40 phonemic categories in each language, and infants acquire words based on these phonemic units." This is true for English,but languages vary widely from 12 phonemes to well over 100 in some African languages. Please consider why this point is relevant to word learning and modify it to make the sentence general or eliminate altogether.
 * Phono dev. This section makes great connections between phonology and early word learning. I have one question about the phrase "seen articulations". Does this mean the mouth movements they observe their caregivers making while talking? It might need a bit more explanation to be clear.
 * good update on the vocab spurt. This reflects the literature which shows some kids do, and most don't spurt.
 * I think this is ready to go for GA. This is a substantive contribution to Wikipedia and I am pleased with the work you have done.


 * Allow me to second Paula's view on the lead being too short. I would say that you should expand it to four paragraphs - one for each of the top-level sections. You should try and cover all the major points in the article in the lead, as it is meant to be a summary of the entire article. If you have a little time, it might be a good idea to read the manual of style on lead sections to get a sense for what is expected. I'll make some comments about its readiness for GA later on today when I have a spare moment to review it in more detail. Best —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 03:53, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, here are my comments on the article. Sorry if they seem a bit brutal! This is tough love, I'm afraid. Feel free to trout me if I go too over the top... Again, sorry that this review has been rather negative, and I don't wish to take anything away from what you've achieved so far in writing the article. It is looking a lot better than it was a month or two ago. Of course, if you have any questions about my comments, please let me know. Best regards —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 05:52, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * In the first paragraph of the "early word learning" section, the prose is a bit choppy - it reads like a disconnected list of facts, rather than an overview. In particular, the part beginning with "The subcomponents of language are" doesn't seem relevant to that section. I think it would be acceptable to leave the explanations out - it is probably enough to link to the relevant articles rather than explaining the terms, and if we do need explain something we can do it in the appropriate place, rather than doing the explanations at the start all at once.
 * In the phonological development section, the time scales are jumbled up. We have 6 months, then 10-12 months, then 16-30 weeks, and then the highlights of development from 6-8 weeks up to 7 years. Can we put these in chronological order? Also, can we try and use the same time units as much as possible? Let's stick to months apart from where it obviously doesn't make sense (6-8 weeks, 7 years).
 * Again, I'm seeing prose issues in this section. For example, take "Children are able to learn words by distinguishing the different sounds from the language they are exposed to, and dividing these sounds into meaningful units to acquire words." This would read better if we removed "to acquire words" from the end - as it stands, this part is redundant.
 * For another example, take this sentence: "There is a relationship between children's prelinguistic phonetic skills and their lexical progress at age two." This sentence doesn't really say much by itself, and I think it would be better shortened and merged with the proceeding sentence.
 * Here's another example of a redundant sentence: "Language input is relevant in vocabulary development." This seems to be stating the obvious, as in "babies need to hear words to learn them", and could be deleted without much loss in prose quality.
 * In this sentence: "infants' seen articulations actually enhance their ability to discriminate sounds" - what does "infants' seen articulations" mean? Is this referring to gestures that they make?
 * In the "Babbling" section, we have "At this stage, babies start to play with sounds that are not used to express their emotional or physical states". However, there is no previous mention of babies using sounds to express emotional or physical states in the article. There is a mention of them learning words for things which are important to them, but that is all that I could find. This either needs to be explained, or the phrase "that are not used to express their emotional or physical states" needs to be dropped.
 * As far as prose issues go, I think I'll leave things here for now. Sorry to be blunt, but all of the prose needs a thorough review to remove redundancies, to use clearer language, to make the transitions smoother, and to keep the article internally consistent.
 * Related to my comment above about the time scales, might I suggest restructuring the entire "early word learning" section by time scale? We could have subsections like "the first six months", "6-12 months", "12-18 months", etc. (or whatever time scales you think are appropriate.) If we have two or three paragraphs in each of these sections outlining what happens at those times, I think the section will have a lot less problems with consistency.
 * The heading "Establishing meaning" is a bit vague - how about replacing this with "Mapping problem" or "Mapping theories"? The section is about the different theories that try to explain how words are mapped, so the section heading should reflect this.
 * Finally, at the moment the article is very English-centric. This complaint is more featured-article level than good-article level, but to make this article a truly general description of the subject we will need to cover vocabulary development in different languages and in different cultures. For example, might using Chinese characters affect vocabulary development in east Asian schoolchildren? And could we have some examples of pragmatic development in non-Western cultures?
 * Mr. Stradivarius. Thank you for taking the time to make these comments. We'll focus further on the clarity and in particular on finding non-English links to these concepts. This is the kind of content-level feedback we need to make progress. Paula Marentette (talk) 15:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I see that the GA submission proceeded on our previously planned timetable. I hope that we can continue to make changes to address these issues while that process unfolds. Paula Marentette (talk) 20:22, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Responding to GA suggestions
Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know which parts of the good article suggestions I've started to work on so far:
 * I edited the caption for the first picture, trying to make it relevant to vocabulary development. Please check out the new caption and edit to improve it. :)
 * I interlinked babbling, but I'm not sure if it's really necessary since we already have a link to the main article? Hopefully that's not redundant.
 * I removed the italicization for 'school years,' but haven't changed any of the other italics.
 * I took the references out of our lead paragraphs, as they're already cited elsewhere.
 * I tried to clarify "after they turn one."
 * I rephrased the sentence on the 'highlights' of phonological development
 * I went through and made sure the citations are in numerical order (I think I got all of them!)
 * I rephrased the 'non-encyclopaedic language' from my section
 * I tried to link the 'subcomponents of language' in the 'early word learning section' briefly to vocabulary development.

I wasn't really sure where to begin with the other suggestions yet. Alindsay9 (talk) 01:38, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Those edits are great. As for the other suggestions, those concerning grammar and punctuation etc. aren't strictly necessary for passing the GA criteria but are nonetheless very beneficial; I've summarised the main points that are holding back promotion (under: Notes) and have put the article "On Hold" for the moment - this gives you a period of seven days in which to make changes, which should be ample time. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 17:37, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Alindsay9! I took out the bullets in my section. I have been trying to find sources on vocabulary development in the East and in adults. Here is some sources that may be useful: I didn't get a chance to go through them very well but I thought I would put them up incase anyone else had time. We can talk about where information on the East and in adults can fit in our article in class tomorrow. --Asia44 (talk) 00:21, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Tardif, T., Fletcher, P., Liang, W., & Kaciroti, N. (2009). Early vocabulary development in Mandarin (Putonghua) and Cantonese. Journal Of Child Language, 36(5), 1115-1144. doi:10.1017/S0305000908009185
 * Gao, X., & Ma, Q. (2011). Vocabulary Learning and Teaching Beliefs of Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Language Awareness, 20(4), 327-342.
 * Emily Yee Man, C. (2011). The Productive Vocabulary Development in the Written Chinese of the Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking Children. International Education Studies, 4(4), 47-68. doi:10.5539/ies.v4n4p47
 * Beech, J. R., & Keys, A. (1997). Reading, vocabulary and language preference in 7- to 8-year-old bilingual Asian children. British Journal Of Educational Psychology, 67(4), 405-414.
 * Hao, M., Shu, H., Xing, A., & Li, P. (2008). Early vocabulary inventory for Mandarin Chinese. Behavior Research Methods, 40(3), 728-733.
 * Beitchman, J., Jiang, H., Koyama, E., Johnson, C., Escobar, M., Atkinson, L., & ... Vida, R. (2008). Models and determinants of vocabulary growth from kindergarten to adulthood. Journal Of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 49(6), 626-634.

Here are some changes I made regarding the GA suggestions: Eheiberg (talk) 18:53, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I expanded on the vocabulary development throughout schooling and adulthood under Vocabulary development in school age children, as the means and methods for vocabulary devlopment are the same for both schooling and adulthood
 * I provided a simple definition of fast mapping and cleaned up the sentence structure
 * I specified ages in the lead paragraph in regards to school age children
 * I reordered some of the reference numbers
 * I change 'the school years' to 'their school years'

Thanks very much MasterOfHisOwnDomain, we appreciate your feedback! Asia44, thanks! I will take a look at these as I have more time this week too. : ) Alindsay9 (talk) 02:56, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

A few comments on the requested revisions:
 * The article's bias on children's use of language. (GA criteria 3a: major aspects)
 * This is true. The challenge of learning words is primarily figuring out how words work. This happens during the preschool years, which is why so much of the article addresses this time period. The section on school-age children describes the processes involved in increasing one's vocabulary, primarily through conversation and reading. This section acknowledges that these are the primary methods used by adults.


 * The article's bias towards children's vocabulary development in the West. (GA criteria 3a: major aspects)
 * Also true. This is primarily because the students in this class are reading English research literature which is overrepresentative of western languages. Where possible, students have added additional information. One interesting cultural/linguistic difference we have discussed in class is the difference between the emphasis on nouns and verbs in children's very early word use across languages. Asia 44 will add some information about this (see refs above). There is a challenge however in that the present article doesn't currently go into much linguistic detail about the differences between nouns and verbs. We cut that specificity out early as this article is already quite complex. Addressing the cross-linguistic acquisition patterns of distinct parts of speech would make an excellent article, but in my opinion, it should be a distinct one. Any advice about how to find the right level of complexity and further reduce the bias for this article would be appreciated.

Paula Marentette (talk) 19:10, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Impact of recent student edits
This article has recently been edited by students as part of their course work for a university course. As part of the quality metrics for the education program, we would like to determine what level of burden is placed on Wikipedia's editors by student coursework.

If you are an editor of this article who spent time correcting edits to it made by the students, please tell us how much time you spent on cleaning up the article. Please note that we are asking you to estimate only the negative effects of the students' work. If the students added good material but you spent time formatting it or making it conform to the manual of style, or copyediting it, then the material added was still a net benefit, and the work you did improved it further. If on the other hand the students added material that had to be removed, or removed good material which you had to replace, please let us know how much time you had to spend making those corrections. This includes time you may have spent posting to the students' talk pages, or to Wikipedia noticeboards, or working with them on IRC, or any other time you spent which was required to fix problems created by the students' edits. Any work you did as a Wikipedia Ambassador for that student's class should not be counted.

Please rate the amount of time spent as follows:
 * 0 -No unproductive work to clean up
 * 1 - A few minutes of work needed
 * 2 - Between a few minutes and half an hour of work needed
 * 3 - Half an hour to an hour of work needed
 * 4 - More than an hour of work needed

Please also add any comments you feel may be helpful. We welcome ratings from multiple editors on the same article. Add your input here. Thanks! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:38, 27 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The article is definitely a great improvement. I tagged some weasel words that should be clarified . Marokwitz (talk) 07:29, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

No mention of sign language vocabulary development
The article strictly talks about spoken languages, without a single mention of whether signers learn the same way. Some sentences downright deny the fact that language competence can develop without hearing: "Studies related to vocabulary development show that children's language competence depends upon their ability to hear sounds during infancy." Some work needs to be done in order for this article to encompass both linguistics modalities (oral and visual-gestural). Additionally, there should be a section dedicated to vocabulary development in children learning to sign, with a focus on the similarities/differences to their oral language peers. A possible up-to-date source could be pp. 169-203 of the book Language, Cognition and the Brain. Right now I'm busy with other things, so others are free to implement the changes mentioned above. I might come back a few days later and try editing the article myself if no one else already started on it.--Megaman en m (talk) 11:45, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Went ahead and added a section on it. Criticism is welcome.--Megaman en m (talk) 12:43, 26 July 2019 (UTC)