Two-word Utterances in the Speech of Young Children: Gender Aspect according to MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories

Abstract

The appearance of two-component utterances in children’s speech is one of the key stages of speech ontogenesis. The transition from separate lexemes to sentences is a cardinal event associated not only with the development of speech skills, but also with cognitive development. Previous studies based on longitudinal data have shown that two-word utterances appear from the age of one and a half to two years. Gender differences in the acquisition of this skill have never been considered. What is new in this study is that the results are based on an analysis of a representative database of children of both sexes, as well as separately boys and girls. For the first time, the norms of syntactic development were statistically substantiated and risk groups were identified. The material of the study was a database based on 1037 MacArthur questionnaires completed by parents (487 boys and 550 girls aged 18 to 36 months). The main results confirmed the age of appearance of utterances from one and a half to two years, but important nuances were revealed. Number of girls of 19 months, whose speech contains phrases, is twice the number of boys, and the differences are statistically significant). However, at the age of 20 months the boys are chasing the girls. Then the girls are slightly ahead, but we only observe significance at 23-month age. Girls, whose results refer to the median, say utterances at 20 months, and «median» boys - about 22-month age. The risk groups are different: we see a significant delay (children in the 5th percentile) in boys at the age of 25 months and in girls at 23-month age: they do not combine words into sentences. Comparison of the results of Russian-speaking children with the results of children speaking several other languages (according to scientific literature) confirmed the opinion about the typical age of the appearance of double-syntaxemic sentences. The results obtained are valid and reliable, therefore they are valuable in diagnosing the speech development of young children, as well as in conducting scientific research at this stage.