Large-scale investigations of variability in children's first words.

Abstract

A child’s first word is an important step towards language. Ag-gregated across children, the distribution of these first produc-tive uses of language can act as a window into early cogni-tive and linguistic development. We investigate both the vari-ability and predictability in children’s first words across four new datasets. We find, first, that children’s first words tend to emerge earlier than previously estimated: more than 75 percent of children produce their first word before their first birthday. Second, we find a high degree of consistency in the types of things children name in their first words, independent of the age at which they are produced. Finally, we show that the par-ticular words that children produce first are predictable from two linguistic factors: input frequency and phonological com-plexity. Together, our results suggest a degree of independence between early conceptual and linguistic development.