Mikkel Wallentin, Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics, Aarhus University / Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University Hospital / Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University
Fabio Trecca, Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics, Aarhus University / TrygFonden’s Centre for Child Research, Aarhus University
Does sex/gender matter for language acquisition? Small female advantages in vocabulary size are well-documented. Girls, on average, begin to speak slightly earlier than boys (Bleses, et al., 2008; Wallentin, 2020), and small sex/gender differences in mean vocabulary size have been shown consistently across languages, with girls outperforming boys on measures of receptive and productive vocabulary from a young age (Berglund, et al., 2005; Bleses, et al., 2008; Fenson, et al., 1994; Frank, et al., 2021; Simonsen, et al., 2013). In this study, however, we show that children’s early vocabulary composition is a significantly better predictor of sex/gender than size.
We conducted classification analysis on word production from children (12-36 months, n =39,553) acquiring 26 different languages, using data from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories Words and Sentences (MB-CDI: WS)(Braginsky, et al., 2020; Fenson, et al., 2007; Frank, et al., 2017), available from Wordbank (http://wordbank.stanford.edu).
Children’s sex/gender was classified above chance level in 22 out of 26 languages. Classification accuracy was significantly higher than for models based on vocabulary size and increased as a function of sample size. Classification accuracy also increased as a function of age and peaked at 30 months, reaching accuracy levels observed in studies of adult word use.
A sex/gender score was computed for each word in a language based on classification coefficients. The higher the score, the more predictive a word is of sex/gender. We used semantic/grammatical category tags from the Wordbank database to predict the sex/gender scores for individual words. Within languages, several categories were found to predict the sex/gender score. In 24 out of 26 language samples, the category Clothing significantly predicted sex/gender score with a negative parameter estimate, indicating the category being used more by girls. In 23 out of 26 language samples, the category Vehicles significantly predicted sex/gender score with a positive parameter estimate, indicating the category being produced more by boys.
Across languages, a mixed-effects analysis with category as fixed-effects and language sample as random effects showed that sex/gender scores were significantly predicted by the 3 categories Animals, Body parts, Clothing, Connecting words, Games/Routines, Toys and Pronouns, all of which were significantly more likely to be produced by girls; and Outside/Places and Vehicles, which were more likely to be produced by boys.
These differences in vocabulary are indicative of biocultural differences in the lifeworld of children and may themselves cause further differences in development.
References
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