Child language development: The differences between Japanese and English

Abstract

In early language development, it is known that Japanese-speaking children acquire words in a more gradual manner and have smaller productive vocabulary sizes compared with English-speaking children. On the other hand, Japanese-speaking children have an ability to learn new words correctly from earlier stages of lexical development than English-speaking children. Why do Japanese-speaking children have smaller productive vocabulary sizes despite this ability to learn words correctly? To explore this riddle, we compared parental input between Japanese and English and examined the relationship between parental input and child vocabulary development.