Variability and Consistency in Early Language Learning: The Wordbank Project
Abstract
A data-driven exploration of children's early language learning across different languages, providing an empirical reference and a new theoretical framework. This book examines variability and consistency in children's language learning across different languages and cultures, drawing on Wordbank, an open database with data from more than 75,000 children and twenty-nine languages or dialects. This big data approach makes the book the most comprehensive cross-linguistic analysis to date of early language learning. Moreover, its data-driven picture of which aspects of language learning are consistent across languages suggests constraints on the nature of children's language learning mechanisms. The book provides both a theoretical framework for scholars of language learning, language, and human cognition, and a resource for future research. Wordbank archives data from parents' reports about their children's language learning using instruments in the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI); its goal is to make CDI data available for study and analysis. After an overview of practical and theoretical issues, each of the book's empirical chapters applies a particular analysis to the Wordbank dataset, considering such topics as vocabulary size, demographic variation, syntactic and semantic categories, and the relationship between vocabulary growth and grammar. The final three chapters draw on the preceding chapters to quantify variability and consistency, consider the bird's eye view of language acquisition afforded by the data, and reflect on methodology.
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Gestures develop rapidly during the 9-11 month period.
“The children included in the present study are of a broader age range (9–11 months), and gestures develop rapidly during this period (e.g., Frank et al., 2021).”
From The role of dyadic combinations of infants' behaviors and caregivers' verbal and multimodal responses in predicting vocabulary outcomes (2025) · cites this paper as Frank et al., 2021
The cross-linguistic mean age of acquisition for the pointing gesture is 10.4 months of age.
“The cross‐linguistic mean age of acquisition for the pointing gesture is 10.4 months of age (Frank et al., 2021).”
From The role of dyadic combinations of infants' behaviors and caregivers' verbal and multimodal responses in predicting vocabulary outcomes (2025) · cites this paper as Frank et al., 2021
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Gender differences in early stages of language development. Some evidence and possible explanations
Rinaldi, P., Pasqualetti, P., Volterra, V., & Caselli, M. C. (2023) · Journal of Neuroscience Research · doi:10.1002/jnr.24914 · Cited by 93 · see citing works
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van der Klis, A., Junge, C., Adriaans, F., & Kager, R. (2025) · Infancy · doi:10.1111/infa.12626 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“Deictic gestures include points (index‐finger extensions), shows (holding out an object), and gives (passing on an object) which appear relatively early in children's development (e.g., Bates et al., 1979; Capone & McGregor, 2004; Frank et al., 2021).”
Influential
- Authors
- Frank, M. C., Braginsky, M., Yurovsky, D., & Marchman, V. A.
- Venue
- The MIT Press eBooks
- Publisher
- The MIT Press
- Published
- 2021-03-16
- OpenAlex
- W3137537418
- Cited by
- 206
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2026: 31 · 2025: 35 · 2024: 45 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 3 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 61.67
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The MIT Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Climate Extremes
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Keywords
- early childhood language learning, language acquisition, cross-linguistic comparison, child language acquisition, vocabulary development, syntactic categories, semantic categories, grammar learning, demographic variation, MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory
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