Typical and Delayed Lexical Development in Italian

Purpose: The Language Development Survey (LDS) was used to compare Italian and English lexical development. We addressed the issue of universal versus language-specific aspects of lexical development by testing language, age, and gender effects on vocabulary scores and by comparing vocabulary composition across languages. We addressed the issue of delay versus deviance by comparing vocabulary composition in late talkers and younger vocabulary size-matched children. Methods: Participants were 398 Italian and 206 U.S children ages 18-35 months. Results: Vocabulary size did not differ significantly by language, and age and gender effects on vocabulary size were not moderated by language. The Italian-English Q correlation for percentage word use scores was .55, lower than within-language concordance of >.90. Cross-linguistic concordance declined as age and vocabulary size increased. Many cross-linguistic word matches (63 words) were found among the “top 100” words. Italian late talkers were similar to younger vocabulary size-matched Italian children in vocabulary composition, consistent with findings for English, Greek, and Korean. Conclusions: In both languages, the early lexicons of late talkers and typical talkers contained many of the same words, indicating considerable universality in young children’s lexical development. These common words are therefore good targets for clinical intervention.