Journal of Child Language (2019), 1–29

doi:10.1017/S0305000919000060

ARTICLE

The development of vocabulary and grammar:

a longitudinal study of European Portuguese-
speaking toddlers
Irene CADIME1*, Célia S. MOREIRA2, Ana Lúcia SANTOS3, Carla SILVA1, Iolanda RIBEIRO2,
and Fernanda Leopoldina VIANA1
1
Research Centre on Child Studies, University of Minho, Portugal, 2Psychology Research Center (CIPsi),
University of Minho, Portugal, and 3Centre of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon (CLUL), Portugal
*Corresponding author: Research Centre on Child Studies, University of Minho, Gualtar Campus,
4710-057 Braga, Portugal. E-mail: [email protected]

(Received 1 December 2017; revised 24 August 2018; accepted 25 January 2019)

Abstract
The goals of this study were to analyze the growth and stability of vocabulary, mean length
of the three longest utterances (MLLUw), and sentence complexity in European
Portuguese-speaking children aged 1;4–2;6, to explore differences in growth as a
function of personal and family-related variables, and to investigate the inter-
relationships among the three language dimensions. Fifty-one European Portuguese-
speaking toddlers were longitudinally assessed at 1;4, 1;9, 2;1, and 2;6, through parent
reports. Exponential growth models best described acquisition patterns during this
period, but the vocabulary growth accelerated across the full age-range, whereas the
growth of grammar dimensions accelerated mainly after 1;9. High variability was
observed in the scores, but the toddlers’ relative positions were mostly stable over time.
Gender approached significance as a predictor of vocabulary growth. Maternal
educational level did not predict the growth of any of the three language dimensions.
Both vocabulary and MLLUw predicted sentence complexity.

Keywords: vocabulary; sentence complexity; mean length of utterance

Introduction
Research conducted in several languages has suggested some individual variability in the
development of linguistic skills. The bulk of research also suggests rapid growth in lexical
skills in the first years of life, but the growth of grammar skills has been less studied.
Personal and family-related variables have also been associated with the development
of linguistic skills, but more research on how these variables shape the growth curves
of vocabulary and grammar is needed. Additionally, research results have highlighted
a high interdependence between lexical and grammatical skills across a large variety
of languages, but studies on this and the previous issues are particularly scarce in
European Portuguese. Thus, the goals of this study were to analyze the growth and
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 2 Cadime et al.

stability of lexical and grammar skills, to explore differences in growth as a function of

personal and family-related variables, and to investigate the inter-relationships among
lexical and grammar dimensions in European Portuguese-speaking toddlers.

Vocabulary and grammar development

Children typically produce their first words around their first birthday. These first words
are usually produced sparsely, but after a few months children typically produce an
increasing number of words, which has been described as an acceleration in the
growth of vocabulary, until at least age 2;6 (Bates, Dale, & Thal, 1995; Goldfield &
Reznick, 1990). Consistently, several longitudinal studies involving English-speaking
toddlers under the age of 2;6 have provided empirical evidence of the accelerated
quadratic growth in vocabulary (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2008; Ganger & Brent, 2004;
Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, & Lyons, 1991). Although most studies have been
conducted with English-speaking toddlers, similar findings have been observed in
longitudinal (e.g., Stolt, Haataja, Lapinleimu, & Lehtonen, 2008) and cross-sectional
(e.g., Marjanovič-Umek, Fekonja-Peklaj, & Podlesek, 2013) studies performed in other
languages. Although most studies converge on this finding, certain exceptions remain.
For example, a study involving Slovenian speakers using a longitudinal design in which
children were assessed between 1;4 and 2;7 showed that vocabulary growth was better
described by a cubic (S-shaped) function in which the acceleration was higher during
the intermediate time-points and slower during the first and final time-points
(Marjanovič-Umek, Fekonja-Peklaj, & Sočan, 2017). This finding seems to contradict a
previous study, which was also conducted with Slovenian-speaking children but used a
cross-sectional design, showing that a quadratic function was the most adequate to
describe vocabulary growth between the ages of 0;8 and 2;6 (Marjanovič-Umek et al.,
2013). Although a quadratic growth function has been found to most adequately
describe vocabulary growth until the age of 2;6 in most studies, this has not been the
case in studies involving older children. Several studies in children older than 2;0–2;6
suggest that growth in vocabulary is nearly linear after this age until at least the age of
entrance into primary school (Eriksson, 2017; Huttenlocher et al., 1991).
In addition, a large variation in vocabulary development has been documented. The
variability in word production is very low before the age of one because most children at
this age have not begun to produce words, but the variability in individual trajectories
increases as the number of words produced by children increases in the highest
percentiles some months later (Bates et al., 1995). This finding is illustrated by a
large-scale study performed to validate the European-Portuguese versions of the
Communicative Development Inventories as follows: at the age of 1;0, the children in
the 10th percentile produced no words, and the children in the 50th and 90th
percentiles produced 2 and 13 words on average, respectively; at the age of 1;4, the
children in the 10th, 50th, and 95th percentiles produced 3, 18, and 65 words,
respectively; and the number of words produced increased to 57, 200, and 436 in the
10th, 50th, and 95th percentiles by the age of 2;0 (Viana, Cadime, et al., 2017).
However, this study employed a cross-sectional design, which inhibited drawing
conclusions regarding individual trajectories of vocabulary growth.
One of the first markers of grammar development is the ability to combine words.
Studies using parental reports indicate that approximately 50% of children already
combine words by approximately ages 1;5 to1;7, and nearly all children combine
words by the age of 2;0 (Simonsen, Kristoffersen, Bleses, Wehberg, & Jorgensen, 2014;
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 Journal of Child Language 3

Trudeau & Sutton, 2011; Viana, Pérez-Pereira, et al., 2017). After starting to combine
words, children produce sentences which are progressively longer and more complex.
The mean length of utterances (MLU), which is measured either by the number of
morphemes or by the number of words, is among the most common measures used
to assess grammatical development. Studies relying on parental reports that consider
the three longest utterances produced by the child, i.e., studies based on the
MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories, have shown that the mean
length of the longest utterances measured in words (which we refer to as MLLUw in
this paper) is approximately 2 at the age of 1;6, but this number increases to more
than 5 or even 7 words at the age of 2;6, depending on the language studied
(Marjanovič-Umek et al., 2017; Trudeau & Sutton, 2011). Regarding the growth of
the MLU, cross-sectional studies involving toddlers aged up to age 3;0 using free-play
conditions to collect data suggest that a linear relationship exists between the MLU
and age (Klee, Schaffer, May, Membrino, & Mougey, 1989; Miller & Chapman, 1981).
This linear relationship has also been observed in longitudinal studies, including those
conducted by Rollins, Snow, and Willet (1996), who collected samples of spontaneous
speech from a group of 36 English-speaking toddlers between the ages of 1;2 and 2;8.
However, this finding seems to be limited to MLU development until approximately
the age of 3;0. Scarborough, Wyckoff, and Davidson (1986) conducted a longitudinal
study involving 12 typically developing English-speaking children who were assessed
at six-month intervals between the ages of 2;0 and 5;0 and found that the MLU
linearly increased until the age of 3;0 and then decelerated. This deceleration in the
MLU after the age of 3;0 has also been reported in other studies involving children
during the preschool years (Rice, Redmond, & Hoffman, 2006).
The complexity of the sentences produced by a child constitutes another measure of
grammatical development. Typically, the first word combinations primarily include
content words, but toddlers progressively introduce function words in their utterances
to produce more complex structures (Parisse & Le Normand, 2000). At the age of 2;6,
some children already produce subordinate clauses (see Bleses et al., 2008). Specifically,
in the case of European Portuguese, clear cases of subordinate clauses, i.e., finite
complement clauses and relatives, and related structures, i.e., clefts, purpose clauses, and
inflected infinitives, have been reported to be spontaneously produced between
approximately the ages of 2;0 and 3;0 (Duarte, Santos, & Alexandre, 2015; Lobo,
Santos, & Soares-Jesel, 2016; Santos, 2009; Santos, Rothman, Pires, & Duarte, 2013;
Soares, 2006). The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI):
Words and Sentences (Fenson et al., 2007) is among the most commonly used
instruments to assess language in toddlers, and includes a subscale to assess the
complexity of the sentences produced by toddlers between the ages of 1;4 and 2;6.
Although this subscale has been included in several CDI adaptations for other
languages (e.g., Andonova, 2015; Bleses et al., 2008; Jackson-Maldonado et al., 2003;
Mariscal et al., 2007; Pérez-Pereira & Soto, 2003), the subscales included in the
different CDI adaptations differ substantially, and to the best of our knowledge, no
longitudinal studies investigating the growth curves of sentence complexity in toddlers
aged up to age 2;6 have been performed.

Predictors of vocabulary and grammar growth

Studies have explored the differences in toddlers’ vocabulary as a function of personal
and environmental variables. Gender is among the most studied variables. Gender
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 4 Cadime et al.

differences have been found in the mean number of words produced in several studies
in different languages involving toddlers under the age of 2;6 (Bleses et al., 2008;
Eriksson et al., 2011; Feldman et al., 2005; Jackson-Maldonado et al., 2003;
Pérez-Pereira & Soto, 2003; Reese & Read, 2000; Silva et al., 2017; Trudeau & Sutton,
2011). According to these studies, girls produce significantly more words than boys.
Gender differences have also been observed in the developmental rate of vocabulary
over time. A longitudinal study conducted by Huttenlocher et al. (1991) suggested
that the acceleration in vocabulary growth was higher in girls than in boys. The
previously mentioned longitudinal study by Marjanovič-Umek et al. (2017), which
was conducted in Slovenia, also revealed gender differences in vocabulary growth
curves; the growth curve in girls was more linear than that in boys, although an
S-shaped curve better fit the full data.
Parental educational level, particularly the maternal educational level, is another
highly explored environmental variable that is frequently used as an indicator of
family socioeconomic status (SES). The research results regarding the existence of
differences in vocabulary as a function of maternal education have been generally
consistent: toddlers with more highly educated mothers have been shown to produce
a higher number of words than toddlers with less educated mothers (Andonova,
2015; Cadime, Silva, Ribeiro, & Viana, 2018; Fenson et al., 2007; McGillion et al.,
2017; Schults, Tulviste, & Konstabel, 2012). However, studies exploring the effects of
parental education on vocabulary growth curves are scarce, and their findings are
inconsistent: several studies found that children with mothers with higher
educational levels not only have a larger lexicon but also demonstrate faster growth
in the number of words that they are able to produce (Pan, Rowe, Singer, & Snow,
2005; Rowe, Raudenbusch, & Goldin-Meadow, 2012). Nonetheless, other studies
suggest that parental education does not significantly affect toddlers’ vocabulary
growth curves (Marjanovič-Umek et al., 2017).
Studies investigating the effects of personal and environmental variables on
grammar are not as abundant as those investigating these effects on vocabulary.
Additionally, the findings regarding gender differences in grammar abilities are
inconsistent. Some studies have found gender differences favoring girls in sentence
complexity (Bleses et al., 2008; Simonsen et al., 2014), or both the MLU and
sentence complexity (Fenson et al., 2007; Jackson-Maldonado et al., 2003; Pérez-
Pereira & Soto, 2003), while other studies have found no gender differences in either
of these grammar dimensions (Andonova, 2015).
To the best of our knowledge, no studies have investigated whether the growth
curves of sentence complexity and the MLU differ between boys and girls or among
toddlers with parents with different educational levels in children under the age of
2;6. Studies involving older children have not provided evidence of differences in
growth curves. For example, a longitudinal study conducted by Rice et al. (2006)
included a sample of typically developing children assessed between the ages of 3;0
and 8;0 and found that MLU growth was (negative) quadratic, while the maternal
educational level had no effect on the MLU growth curve.

Inter-relatedness of vocabulary and grammar

A well-known discussion is ongoing concerning the inter-relatedness of vocabulary and
grammar acquisition, which is centered on the extent to which grammar development
can be predicted by vocabulary development, and especially the extent to which such
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 Journal of Child Language 5

an effect may be interpreted as an argument for a unique linguistic knowledge module

including vocabulary and syntax (Bates & Goodman, 1999; Dionne, Dale, Boivin, &
Plomin, 2003; Pérez-Leroux, Castilla-Earls, & Brunner, 2012). In general, the claim
that the lexicon and grammar correspond to two separate components is associated
with the generative tradition (Chomsky, 1995; DiSciullo & Williams, 1987). In contrast,
a one-dimensional model has been supported within non-generative approaches to
language acquisition.
Studies have consistently indicated that vocabulary is a strong predictor of grammar
development (Bates & Goodman, 1997, 1999; Devescovi et al., 2005). Studies using
different versions of the CDI indicate that word combination is already observable in
certain toddlers with a 50–100-word lexicon and that more than 90% of toddlers
produced word combinations at the 300-word level (Fenson et al., 1994; Viana, Pérez-
Pereira, et al., 2017). These findings show the inter-relatedness of lexical and syntactic
growth: toddlers start to produce longer and grammatically more complex sentences
as their lexicon size increases. Thus, CDI-based studies conducted in several languages
have consistently found strong correlations between lexicon size and grammatical
development indicators, such as MLU and sentence complexity (Fenson et al., 2007;
Mariscal et al., 2007; Marjanovič-Umek et al., 2013; Silva et al., 2017). Although these
studies were cross-sectional, several longitudinal studies have provided similar
conclusions. For example, in a study conducted by Trudeau and Sutton (2011)
involving Quebec-French-speaking toddlers aged 1;7 to 2;4, vocabulary at each
age-point was significantly correlated with sentence complexity measured six months
later. Similarly, the results of the study by Marjanovič-Umek et al. (2017), which was
conducted with Slovenian-speaking toddlers, indicate that vocabulary at age 1;7
significantly predicted MLU and sentence complexity measured one year later.
Altogether, the more words included in a child’s lexicon, the higher the probability
that his/her sentences will be more complex.
Some of these studies interpreted these results as an argument for a one-dimensional
model of language in which vocabulary and grammar are not stored as separated
modules (see Bates & Goodman, 1997, 1999). However, as highlighted by Pérez-
Leroux et al. (2012), a general effect in which global vocabulary growth predicts the
growth of syntactic complexity can be accommodated by both one-dimensional and
two-dimensional models since no model excludes the dependency between certain
aspects of syntax and lexical knowledge acquisition, namely, the acquisition of
functional items or subcategorization properties of lexical items. Nevertheless, a
generative approach would exclude the idea that all syntactic knowledge can be
reduced to lexical knowledge (see Chomsky, 1995, p. 170, for the idea that linguistic
variation is mostly located in the lexicon, while maintaining the distinction between
the lexicon and the computational system).
The length of the utterances produced by toddlers is also closely related to sentence
complexity. Cross-sectional studies using the CDI for data collection in several
languages found a strong correlation between the MLLU and sentence complexity
(Fenson et al., 2007; Mariscal et al., 2007; Silva et al., 2017). Other studies also
found a strong correlation between the CDI sentence complexity subscale and MLU
measured from spontaneous speech samples (Trudeau & Sutton, 2011). Similar
findings have been obtained in studies using only spontaneous speech measures
(Rondal, Ghiotto, Bredart, & Bachelet, 1987; Scarborough, Rescorla, Tager-Flusberg,
Fowler, & Sudhalter, 1991). Therefore, the relationship between MLU and syntactic
complexity has been consistently observed regardless of the type of measure used.
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 6 Cadime et al.

Nonetheless, the results of Scarborough et al. (1991) indicated that the relationship
between MLU and syntactic complexity, as measured by the IPSyn, decreases as
language proficiency increases. Thus, MLU is likely a good indicator of syntactic
complexity during the early stages of grammar development when the set of
structures produced by children is limited; however, MLU is known to gradually
become less informative as the complexity of the structures produced by a child
increases, and the variability in the utterance length increases.

Goals of the present study

Although several longitudinal studies investigating the development of vocabulary
and grammar and their relationships over time have been conducted in several
languages, similar studies conducted in European Portuguese are scarce. In this
paper, we present the results of a longitudinal study conducted in European
Portuguese-speaking toddlers assessed at four time-points (between the ages of 1;4
and 2;6) using the European Portuguese version of the CDI. To the best of our
knowledge, this is the first study of this type for European Portuguese. Exploring
the growth curves of vocabulary and grammar and the factors that are related to
them in a different language can inform us of whether these matters are universal.
Additionally, as mentioned previously, to the best of our knowledge, no studies
have investigated whether the growth curves of sentence complexity and MLLU, as
measured by the CDI, differ between boys and girls or among toddlers with
parents with different educational levels in children under the age of 2;6. Finally,
providing additional evidence of longitudinal relationships between vocabulary and
grammar in an additional language will strengthen the existing research on this
issue and reinforce the necessity of promoting lexical skills at very early ages to
foster future linguistic skills.
Therefore, the specific goals of this study were as follows:

(a) To analyze the developmental trends and stability in the growth of vocabulary
and two measures of grammar, i.e., MLU and sentence complexity, during the
period between ages 1;4 and 2;6;
(b) To determine whether the development of vocabulary and the two grammar
dimensions varies as a function of the toddlers’ gender and parental education
level;
(c) To explore the longitudinal relationships between vocabulary and the two
grammar measures.

Regarding the first goal, considering the results of the aforementioned studies
conducted in other languages in toddlers of approximately the same age using
parental reports as the main technique for data collection, we expected to find
a quadratic growth curve for vocabulary and a linear growth for the MLLUw.
Because studies investigating the growth curves of sentence complexity using the CDI
are lacking, no predictions were proposed for the development of this grammar
dimension. Regarding the second goal of the study, considering the results of
previous studies, we expected that gender, but not parental education level, would
affect language development. Finally, regarding the third goal, we expected to find
results similar to those obtained in studies in other languages as follows: vocabulary
predicts MLLU and sentence complexity, and MLLU predicts sentence complexity.
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 Journal of Child Language 7

Method
Participants and procedures
The participants were recruited from the validation study of the European Portuguese
version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and
Sentences [PT-CDI-WS] (Silva et al., 2017). The parents who participated in the
validation study were asked if they were available to participate in a longitudinal
study and, in the case of a positive response, provide valid contact information
(phone and/or e-mail). In total, 102 parents who provided this information and had
children who were aged 1;4 at the time of their completion of the PT-CDI-WS for
the validation study were contacted and invited to participate in this study. Following
this contact, 92 parents agreed to participate. The PT-CDI-WS was sent to these
parents by mail in the week during which their child reached age 1;9, 2;1, and 2;6.
The parents were asked to complete the instrument as soon as possible and return it
by mail using the pre-paid envelope that was sent with the PT-CDI-WS. Forty-one
parents missed at least two assessment times, and therefore were excluded from the
study. Consequently, parental reports regarding the language skills of 51 European
Portuguese-speaking typically developing toddlers were included in this study. The
reports were completed by the mother (n = 45), father (n = 3), or both parents (n = 3).
Premature children born before 32 weeks of gestation weighing less than 1500 gr.,
children for whom both parents were not European Portuguese-speakers, and
children with severe medical conditions that could result in language impairment
(e.g., Down syndrome) were not included in the sample because these criteria were
the exclusion criteria used in the validation study of the PT-CDI-WS. All seven
regions of Portugal were represented in the sample as follows: North (n = 22), Centre
(n = 10), Lisbon (n = 10), Alentejo (n = 1), Algarve (n = 4), Madeira (n = 2), and
Azores (n = 2). All toddlers attended daycare. Thirty-one toddlers were boys and 20
toddlers were girls. Thirty toddlers had no siblings. Among the toddlers with
siblings, most toddlers had only one brother or sister (n = 14), whereas only seven
toddlers had two or more siblings.
Most toddlers had mothers who held a higher education degree (n = 32; 62.7%),
whereas the remaining toddlers (n = 19; 37.3%) had mothers with lower educational
attainment (completed secondary school or less). Approximately half of the fathers
(n = 25; 49%) completed a higher education degree, and the other half (n = 25; 51%)
completed secondary education or had a lower degree.

Measures and materials

The PT-CDI-WS was used to collect information about the toddlers’ language. This is
an instrument used to assess the communicative development of toddlers aged between
16 and 30 months based on parental reports. In this study, the following three subscales
of the PT-CDI-WS were used: (a) word production, (b) the mean length of the longest
utterances produced by the child (MLLUw), and (c) sentence complexity.
The word production subscale consists of a 639-word checklist. The words are
grouped into 22 semantic categories and include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
formulaic expressions (e.g., bom dia ‘good morning’), as well as prepositions and
adverbs, namely, certain frequent adverbs related to temporal location (e.g., amanhã
‘tomorrow’) or spatial location (e.g., ali ‘there’). In addition, the word production
subscale includes function words / closed-class categories whose emergence in
children’s speech is known to characterize lexical and syntactic development in the
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 8 Cadime et al.

first stages of multiword production: determiners (namely, the definite and indefinite
articles), auxiliary and modal verbs, wh-words, and a subset of conjunctions that are
among those that emerge first in children’s speech (e.g., e ‘and’, porque ‘because’,
mas ‘but’) (see Costa, Alexandre, Santos, & Soares, 2008, for European Portuguese;
Diessel, 2004). A more detailed description of the categories can be found in Viana,
Cadime, et al. (2017). The parents are asked to mark the words produced spontaneously
by their child. The total number of words produced by each child is calculated by
summing all words marked by the parents.
In the sentence length subscale, parents are asked to report three examples of the
longest sentences produced by their children. The mean length of the utterances is
calculated by averaging the number of words in the given examples. Since this
measure is based on the longest three utterances produced by the child (and that the
caregivers can reproduce), we refer to it as MLLUw in the present paper for
distinction from MLUw measured on the basis of large samples of spontaneous speech.
The sentence complexity subscale contains 26 hypothetical situations with three
options representing different types of structures that could be produced by the child
in that context, and a fourth option stating that the child does not produce a similar
structure. Each item is given a score of one point if the most complex structure
(target structure) is selected. All other options are given a score of zero. We present
one of the items in (1) below.

(1) A Maria quer um carro que a mãe tem na mão. A menina diz:
‘Mary wants the car that her mother holds. The girl says:’
a. Popó.1
car
b. Dá popó?
give car
c. Dás-me o popó?
give.2SG-me.DAT the car
‘Would you give me the car?’
d. Ainda não diz nada parecido (He/she does not say anything similar).

In the example presented in (1), the most complex structure (c) – scored with one
point, whereas all others are scored zero – includes the production of overt verbal
morphology and a dative clitic. The subscale assesses the emergence of several markers
of syntactic development that are relevant at these age stages, several specific of
Portuguese, and include: (i) expanded DP with an article or an article followed by a
possessive, which is the expected pattern in Portuguese; (ii) overt verbal inflection (first
and second singular, known to emerge after the third singular; see the corpus-based
study of Gonçalves, 2004) and overt subject–verb agreement, including agreement with
a postverbal subject; (iii) clitics (enclitic and proclitic), including a se impersonal clitic;
(iv) negation; (v) frequent auxiliaries, namely, the future auxiliary (ir ‘go’) and the
progressive auxiliary estar a, which both take an infinitive form of the main verb as a
complement; (vi) use in relevant contexts of the copula verbs ser ‘be’ and estar ‘be’,
with the former associated with individual level predicates and the latter associated with
stage level predicates; (vii) use of prepositions, including forms that correspond to the
contraction of the preposition with a determiner (e.g., na ‘in the’); (viii) wh-questions;

Popó is a common child form for carro ‘car’.

1

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 Journal of Child Language 9

(ix) relative clauses; (x) a causal adverbial clause introduced by porque ‘because’; (xi) a
temporal adverbial clause introduced by quando ‘when’ and presenting the future
subjunctive; and (xii) purpose clauses, including a case of an inflected infinitive with a
second singular inflection (purpose clauses are the context in which inflected infinitives
first emerge in spontaneous speech, around age 2;0; see Santos et al., 2013).
The description of this subscale indicates that it considers specific characteristics of
European Portuguese, a language with a rich verbal inflectional pattern, including
indicative/subjunctive mood opposition, inflected infinitives, and clitics. These are
aspects of syntactic knowledge that are not (because they cannot be) a mere
adaptation of the original American version of the CDI-WS (Fenson et al., 2007);
the design of the subscale for Portuguese more closely follows the Spanish version of
the CDI (López-Ornat et al., 2005), with the introduction of relevant adaptations
(e.g., clitics exhibit a different placement pattern) and innovative aspects, such as the
inflected infinitive. We explore the results of this particular subscale and use it as a
basis for exploring possible relationships with vocabulary growth; the need to
replicate this study on various languages with different characteristics has already
been recognized by Bates and Goodman (1999).
The PT-CDI-WS validation study indicated that the word production (α = .99) and
sentence complexity (α = .96) subscales had high levels of reliability (Silva et al., 2017).
Notably, although clear connections exist between aspects of the vocabulary subscale and
the syntactic complexity subscale (for instance, the lexical subscale asks for wh-words,
and the syntactic complexity subscale for wh-questions), the type of knowledge tested in
the syntactic complexity subscale goes far beyond what is tested in the lexical scale; for
instance, the item testing a wh-question presents subject–verb inversion.

Statistical analyses
In this study, the missing data ranged from a low 7% for vocabulary, 9% for the
MLLUw, and 19% for sentence complexity. The results of Little’s test indicated that
the pattern of missing data was MCAR (missing completely at random) (χ 2(136) =
134.144, p = .529). Considering recent recommendations (Dong & Peng, 2013;
Newman, 2014), we selected the full information maximum likelihood (FIML) to
manage the missing data in our study. The FIML is a direct model-based method
that computes a case-wise likelihood function with observed variables for each case
(Schlomer, Bauman, & Card, 2010).
The statistical analyses were performed using Rstudio version 3.5.1 with the packages
‘lme4’ (Bates, Mächler, Bolker, & Walker, 2015), ‘lmerTest’ (Kuznetsova, Brockhoff, &
Christensen, 2017), ‘lavaan’ (Rosseel, 2012), and ‘AER’ (Kleiber & Zeileis, 2008). First,
the descriptive statistics were calculated for vocabulary, sentence complexity, and
MLLUw at each of the four assessment periods. Then, latent growth modeling was
performed to investigate the vocabulary, sentence complexity, and MLLUw growth
patterns over time. The effects of the toddlers’ gender and maternal education on the
growth patterns were also explored. Pearson’s correlations were calculated to
investigate the stability of the toddlers’ vocabulary, complexity of sentences, and
MLLUw across the age period from 1;4 to 2;6. Finally, structural equation modeling
(SEM) was performed to explore the cross-lagged relationships among the three
variables over time. All relationships between the variables were explored in a
saturated model. In a saturated model, all parameters are freely estimated as indicated
by zero degrees of freedom (Anderson, 2004); therefore, no significance testing is
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 10 Cadime et al.

performed. The existence of mediation effects in these relationships was also explored. In
the mediation analysis, the bootstrapping method was used to compute standard errors
(Hoyle, 2012; Shrout & Bolger, 2002). The database and R code are available at <https://
osf.io/uz3b8/?view_only=e423403881aa42079aab3d 37328126a8>.

Results
Developmental characteristics and individual differences between the ages of 1;4
and 2;6
Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of the different variables of interest included in
this study, namely, vocabulary, sentence complexity, and MLLUw scores. The average
scores of the three language indicators increased with age. Regarding vocabulary, the
toddlers’ mean lexicon size was 33 words at the age of 1;4; this size steadily
increased until reaching a mean value of 454 words at the age of 2;6. Regarding
grammar, most children did not produce sentences at age 1;4, as shown by the
sentence complexity and MLLUw scores. In general, word combination (i.e.,
utterances with at least 2 words) only begins to be frequent at the age of 1;9. At 2;6,
the children produced, on average, 16 of the 26 target structures included in the
sentence complexity subscale. The variability in the scores also increases with age
and is particularly high in the most advanced age stages.
Figure 1 presents the box-plots of these variables at different time-points. The
medians, first and third quartiles, ranges, and outliers are presented. The box-plots
indicate that the variability in all variables increases over time. Moreover, the
skewness progressively decreased and, in the case of vocabulary and sentence
complexity, shifted from positive to negative between the ages of 2;1 and 2;6 as the
children start to produce more complex sentences and a higher number of words. A
noticeable increase in the sentence complexity scale scores was observed between
the ages of 2;1 and 2;6, confirming that this period is particularly associated with
the emergence of complex syntax.

Growth patterns
Visual inspection of the variables’ distributions (see Figure 1) showed potential ceiling
effects in both the vocabulary and the sentence complexity scores at age 2;6. According
to Uttl (2005), ceiling effects occur “when a substantial proportion of individuals obtain
either maximum or near-maximum scores and cannot demonstrate the true extent of
their abilities, resulting in score distributions that are compressed at the upper end of
performance” (p. 460).
In the presence of ceiling effects, regular growth curve models are known to lead to
biased parameter estimation and incorrect conclusions about the shape and magnitude
of the changes (Uttl, 2005). In this case, the Tobit growth model is recommended for
analyzing longitudinal ceiling data (Wang, Zhang, McArdle, & Salthouse, 2009). This
type of model is also known as a ‘censored regression model’. Basically, it assumes that
all observations higher than a prespecified ceiling threshold are censored, i.e., unknown
(but assuming that they are higher than that threshold). To explore the existence of
ceiling effects, we used the guidelines of Uttl (2005), where the following quantity:

(Maximum − Mean)/SD,

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 Journal of Child Language 11
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of vocabulary, sentence complexity, and MLLUw

Variable Mean Median SD Min Max Skew Kurt

Vocabulary
1;4 32.84 23 31.73 1 132 1.61 1.95
1;9 142.4 129 117.25 6 490 1.19 0.98
2;1 293.12 268.5 161.93 20 625 0.13 −1.04
2;6 454.34 508.5 153.52 132 638 −0.72 −0.81
Sentence complexity
1;4 0.12 0 0.4 0 2 3.33 10.98
1;9 1.51 1 2.52 0 13 2.79 8.97
2;1 6.58 4 7.31 0 26 1.35 0.81
2;6 16.07 18 9 1 26 −0.41 −1.33
MLLUw
1;4 1.19 1 0.41 1 2.3 1.63 0.76
1;9 2.15 2 1.22 1 6.3 1.12 1.19
2;1 3.85 3.3 2.24 1 10.3 0.86 0.26
2;6 6.06 5 3.02 2 13 0.72 −0.71
Notes. SD – standard deviation; Min – minimum; Max – maximum; Skew – skewness; Kurt – kurtosis.

which is called the STANDARDIZED DIFFERENCE, is used to explore ceiling effects and to
estimate the ceiling proportion. Uttl found significant ceiling effects when the
standardized difference was approximately 2 or smaller. This standardized difference
was calculated for each target variable of our study and at each assessment moment.
Considering the cut-off point suggested by Uttl, significant ceiling effects occur for
both vocabulary and sentence complexity at age 2;6 (standardized differences = 1.20
and 1.10, respectively). No evidence of ceiling effects was found for the other
assessment times or for MLLUw at any assessment time, given that the values of the
standardized difference were higher than 2.
To specify the ceiling threshold in each case, one must establish the ceiling
proportion, which consists of all maximum or near-maximum scores. In this work,
we regard the best 10% of the results of the scale as the near-maximum scores as
this proportion is commonly used in the literature addressing similar ceiling issues
(for example, see Linton & Kester, 2003; Rodrigues et al., 2013; Warner, 2013). For
vocabulary, this criterion implied a ceiling threshold of 576, encompassing a range of
64 words (576 to 639). At age 2;1, only one toddler scored within this ceiling range,
and at age 2;6, twelve toddlers (24%) scored within this interval. For sentence
complexity, the same criterion produced a ceiling threshold of 25, covering the two
highest scores (25 and 26). At age 2;1, two toddlers achieved these maximum scores,
and at age 2;6, twelve (24%) toddlers scored within this interval. Despite different
data and different measurement scales, these results are in accordance with the
findings of Uttl (2005), where for standardized differences of 1.1–1.2, significant
ceiling effects varied from 17% to 25%. As explained above, Tobit modeling was
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 12 Cadime et al.

Figure 1. Box-plots of vocabulary, sentence complexity, and MLLUw at each of the four assessment times.

conducted to explore the evolution of both vocabulary and sentence complexity across
time. Participants were included as frailties, i.e., as random effects (a mixed-model
approach), and the exponential distribution was selected to perform both models
because it showed superior fit over the Gaussian family.
Note that floor effects were also observed because a high number of zeros were
reported for some variables during the first moments of the study. However, it is
important to note that these scores correspond to true scores, that is, they are not
due to a problem of the measure, as happens with ceiling effects. For this reason,
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 Journal of Child Language 13

floor effects did not deserve any special treatment during data analysis. In particular, left
censoring was not applied, as it would assume that the zero (or close) scores were
negative.
The following procedure was applied to model MLLUw development over time:
because MLLUw scores were obtained using a maximum of three utterances, an
auxiliary variable was created by multiplying all MLLUw scores by 6. This
transformation was performed to obtain discrete data, allowing these scores to be
modeled using a negative binomial family. The negative binomial regression is a
generalization of the Poisson regression because it has the same mean structure but
an extra parameter to model the over-dispersion (see more detailed information in
the ‘Appendix’). Using this model, transition of the MLLUw developmental model
was directly performed by dividing all results by 6. Linear mixed models with a
Gaussian distribution of residuals were assessed and compared with the negative
binomial family. Although linear modeling showed adequacy, the negative binomial
always exhibited better fitting measures, as expected.
In all longitudinal models, ‘age’ (age group; measured in months) was included as a
unique fixed effect. Table 2 presents the results of the comparisons of the successive
models, namely, the linear, quadratic, and cubic models. Orthogonal polynomials
were used to avoid multicollinearity in these models (see the ‘Appendix’ for
additional information on polynomials).
A model comparison was performed by inspecting Akaike’s information criterion
(AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC). The lowest AIC and BIC values
indicate a better fit.
Regarding the vocabulary growth curve, as shown in Table 2, the quadratic Tobit
model had a better fit: this model obtained the lowest AIC and BIC values,
indicating that this model fits better than the linear Tobit model and that the cubic
term does not improve the fit of the model. To simplify the subsequent text, this
model is named ‘Model 1’. Accordingly, not accounting for the uncertainty of
frailties, the fixed effect of time on the vocabulary scores along the assessment period
is written in the following form, where A is toddler age in months:

exp(−3.73831 + 0.56018 A − 0.00736 A2 ),

The growth curve is illustrated in Figure 2, which also shows the raw growth lines of
each toddler. To facilitate the detection of similarities and dissimilarities between the
present results and those of other studies, a comparison with traditional polynomial
approaches was also performed. To understand which polynomial among the linear,
quadratic, and cubic models better (statistically) fits each growth curve in this study,
a polynomial regression analysis was conducted. As shown in Table 2, using this
type of analysis led to a similar result: the quadratic growth curve had a better fit.
Regarding sentence complexity, the AIC/BIC results indicate that the linear Tobit
model fits better (see Table 2). This model is named ‘Model 2’ to simplify the
subsequent text. Accordingly, not accounting for the uncertainty of frailties, the fixed
effect of time on the sentence complexity (SC) scores along the assessment period is
written in the following form:

exp(−6.7317 + 0.3350 A),

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 14 Cadime et al.
Table 2. Growth curve modeling: comparison of the fits of the linear, quadratic, and cubic models

Exponential Tobit Negative binomial Traditional

growth model growth model polynomials

Variable AIC BIC AIC BIC AIC BIC

Vocabulary
Linear 2075.8 2173.5 – – 163.9 166.0
Quadratic 2074.5 2172.1 – – 74.8 77.6
Cubic 2076.1 2177.1 – – 76.5 80.0
Sentence complexity
Linear 495.7 622.6 – – 90.4 92.6
Quadratic 497.3 625.7 – – 62.4 65.3
Cubic 497.1 628.5 – – 26.5 30.0
MLLUw
Linear – – 1207.0 1219.9 65.7 67.8
Quadratic – – 1206.7 1222.8 8.7 11.5
Cubic – – 1206.6 1225.9 −57.5 −53.9
Notes. AIC – Akaike’s information criterion; BIC – Bayesian information criterion.

Figure 2. Vocabulary growth curve and observed individual trajectories over time.

For comparison with traditional modeling approaches, the same type of regression
analysis that was performed for vocabulary was also conducted for sentence
complexity using the same time period (age 1;4 to 2;6). For sentence complexity, the
cubic approximation fit better (see Table 2). The superiority of the cubic model is
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 Journal of Child Language 15

Figure 3. Sentence complexity growth curve and observed individual trajectories over time.

due to the flatness of the curve from age 1;4 to 1;9, which is a feature that the quadratic
family cannot reproduce. The growth in sentence complexity accelerates after that
time-point. The predicted growth curve is illustrated in Figure 3, which also shows
the individual growth lines of each toddler obtained using the raw data. Very high
heterogeneity was observed in the individual growth lines. Most children obtained a
score of zero in sentence complexity at age 1;4, and several children obtained a score
of zero at ages 1;9 and 2;1. Although the shapes of the lines differed across toddlers,
most children showed a monotonic increase after the age of 1;9.
For MLLUw, although the cubic model has the lowest AIC, the BIC results indicate
that the linear negative binomial model fits better than the two alternative models (see
Table 2). Therefore, the linear negative binomial model was considered the best fitting
model. This model is named ‘Model 3’ to simplify the subsequent text. Accordingly, not
accounting for the uncertainty of random effects, the fixed effect of time on MLLUw
scores along the assessment period is written in the following form:

1/6∗ exp(0.0958 + 0.1145 A),

The between-subject variability is 0.168. Figure 4 presents the MLLUw growth curve
and the individual growth lines of each toddler computed using raw scores. Regarding
the comparison with traditional approaches, the results of the regression analysis for the
period from age 1;4 to 2;6 indicated that the cubic approximation was the most
adequate to describe the MLLUw growth (see Table 2). As Figure 4 suggests, the
cubic approximation fitted better given that low MLLUw values were observed at
the initial time-point, followed by an acceleration afterwards. Observation of the
individual trajectories suggests that a monotonic increase occurs in the mean length
of the utterances produced by the toddlers. Nevertheless, a small decrease in MLLUw
scores between two assessment times was reported for four toddlers. Moreover, for
several toddlers, MLLUw growth seemed to accelerate particularly after age 1;9.
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 16 Cadime et al.

Figure 4. MLLUw growth curve and individual trajectories over time.

Effects of the toddler’s gender and parental education on the growth curves
The toddler’s gender and maternal education were separately added to each of the
previously mentioned models as predictors to explore their effects on the growth
curves of vocabulary, sentence complexity, and MLLUw. Maternal education had no
significant effect on the growth factors of each of the three language scores.
Therefore, only the toddler’s gender was maintained as a predictor in each of the
three models.
A marginally significant effect was obtained when gender was added to Model 1
(vocabulary) as follows: given two toddlers, a boy and a girl both at the same age,
the girl is expected to have a 52% higher vocabulary score [exp(0.420) = 1.52, p
= .063]. Notably, the mean sample vocabulary score is always higher for girls (see
Figure 2), and the ratios of these scores at the four assessment times are 1.72 (1;4),
1.30 (1;9), 1.44 (2;1), and 1.18 (2;6).
In Model 2 (sentence complexity), the effect of the toddler’s gender was non-
significant [exp(0.225) = 1.252, p = .390]. Adding gender as a predictor to Model 3
(MLLUw) did not yield a significant effect [exp(0.128) = 1.137, p = .310].

Stability of language development over time (from ages 1;4 to 2;6)

Pearson’s correlations between the various assessment times were calculated to study
the stability of the toddlers’ vocabulary, MLLUw, and sentence complexity. The
correlation matrix is presented in Table 3. The correlations for each individual
variable across different times decrease as the time distance increases.
Regarding vocabulary, the high correlations between scores at consecutive
time-points suggest that the relative position of the toddlers was quite stable for
periods of 4–5 months. The correlation was particularly high between the number of
words produced in the final two assessment times, suggesting that changes in the
relative position in vocabulary are limited after the children’s second birthday.
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 Journal of Child Language 17

The correlations between the scores obtained for sentence complexity at each of
the four assessment times had a distinct pattern. The correlations of the scores obtained
at the age of 1;4 and the scores obtained in the following assessment time were non-
significant (see Table 3), likely because most children had a score of zero in sentence
complexity at the age of 1;4 (see Table 1). However, as previously mentioned, the size
of the correlations increased over time, and the correlation between the scores obtained
at the age of 2;1 and those obtained at the age of 2;6 is particularly high, suggesting
that the position of the toddlers in sentence complexity is relatively stable.
The size of the correlations for the MLLUw scores between consecutive assessment
times is large, suggesting stability in these scores. However, the correlations between the
MLLUw scores at the age of 1;4 and the remaining assessment times are lower than
those between the scores obtained in the following assessment times, which can be
explained by the fact that most children do not produce sentences at age 1;4.

Inter-relationships among vocabulary, MLLUw, and sentence complexity between

ages 1;9 and 2;1
To understand longitudinal changes in vocabulary, MLLUw, and sentence complexity,
an auto-regressive cross-lagged path analysis model was specified to examine temporal
associations between them over time. The computation included an estimation of the
robust standard errors, and the FIML method was used to address missing data. The
scores at age 1;4 were not used in this analysis due to the high number of zero
scores for MLLUw and sentence complexity at this age. Similarly, the scores obtained
at 2;6 were not used due to the existence of ceiling effects in the vocabulary and
sentence complexity subscales. Consequently, the scores obtained for vocabulary,
MLLUw, and sentence complexity at age 1;9 were used to predict the scores obtained
for the same variables at age 2;1.
This model is depicted in Figure 5 and shows that, from age 1;9 to 2;1, both
vocabulary and MLLUw are temporal precursors to sentence complexity, but
vocabulary has a stronger effect.
Mediation effects were further tested. We hypothesized that MLLUw mediates the
relationship between vocabulary and sentence complexity at both ages 1;9 and 2;1.
Figure 6 outlines these mediation effects. The mediation effect of MLLUw in the
relationship between vocabulary and sentence complexity at age 1;9 approaches
significance, given that 0 touches one of the 95% bootstrap confidence interval
(CI) limits. At age 2;1, the mediation effect is significant, but the mediation is only
partial given that the direct relationship between vocabulary and sentence complexity
is also significant.

Discussion
The first goal of this study was to analyze the developmental trends and stability in the
growth of vocabulary and two measures of grammar, i.e., MLLUw and sentence
complexity, using a sample of European Portuguese-speaking toddlers assessed
longitudinally between the ages of 1;4 and 2;6.
Regarding the analyses of the growth curves, the exponential Tobit growth model
was used to compute the growth curves of vocabulary and sentence complexity and
was selected due to its suitability for managing ceiling effects, whereas the negative
binomial family was used for MLLUw due to its suitability for managing discrete
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18
Cadime et al.
Table 3. Pearson’s correlations among vocabulary, sentence complexity, and MLLUw scores at different assessment times

Variable Voc. 1;4 Voc. 1;9 Voc. 2;1 Voc. 2;6 SC 1;4 SC 1;9 SC 2;1 SC 2;6 MLLUw 1;4 MLLUw 1;9 MLLUw 2;1 MLLUw 2;6

Voc. 1;4 1***

Voc. 1;9 .70*** 1***
Voc. 2;1 .63*** .84*** 1***
Voc. 2;6 .58*** .78*** .94*** 1***
SC 1;4 .26* .25 .06 .18 1***
SC 1;9 .31* .68*** .51*** .35** −0.17 1***
SC 2;1 .54*** .92*** .82*** .71*** .01 .69*** 1***
SC 2;6 .32* .59*** .82*** .79*** .12 .27* .68*** 1***
MLLUw 1;4 .23 .37** .39** .38** −0.14 .22 .51*** .28* 1***
MLLUw 1;9 .49*** .83*** .70*** .66*** −0.07 .74*** .82*** .56*** .43*** 1***
MLLUw 2;1 .31* .71*** .60*** .59*** .03 .50*** .71*** .53*** .37** .77*** 1***
MLLUw 2;6 .33** .67*** .62*** .60*** .11 .33** .69*** .60*** .47*** .64*** .80*** 1***
Notes. Voc. – vocabulary; SC – sentence complexity; MLLUw – mean length of the longest utterances (measured in words); *** p < .001, ** p < .01; * p < .05.
 Journal of Child Language 19

Figure 5. Autoregressive cross-lagged path analysis model to investigate the influences of MLLUw and sentence
complexity from ages 1;9 to 2;1 across time.
Notes. Double-headed arrows represent correlations and single-headed arrows represent paths. Solid black lines
represent significant values (p < .05), dashed lines represent marginally significant results (.05 < p < .1), and gray
lines represent non-significant values (p > .1). Italicized numbers represent the amount of variance explained (R2)
by the corresponding exogenous variables. For simplicity, error terms are not displayed.

data and its superior fit compared with other families. As a result, the presented growth
curves are exponential functions composed with polynomials, reflecting one of the
novelties of this work. The results of our study indicated that a quadratic function
best describes vocabulary development in our sample of European
Portuguese-speaking toddlers who were followed longitudinally, which is consistent
with most of the literature suggesting rapid growth of vocabulary up to age 2;6 (e.g.,
Brooks & Meltzoff, 2008; Ganger & Brent, 2004; Huttenlocher et al., 1991;
Marjanovič-Umek et al., 2013; Stolt et al., 2008).
Regarding MLLUw, the results of our study indicate that a linear negative binomial
model had a better fit. Additional analyses were conducted indicating that, considering
the time period from age 1;4 to 2;6, MLLUw growth was low at the initial time-point
but accelerated rapidly until age 2;6. The average MLLUw was only one word at age
1;4, increasing to a mean of 6 words for the toddlers’ longest utterances at age 2;6.
The MLLUw reported at each assessment time-point is highly similar to those
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 20 Cadime et al.

Figure 6. Mediation effects of MLLUw in the relationship between vocabulary and sentence complexity at ages
1;9 (left) and at 2;1 (right).
Notes. All solid lines represent significant relationships at the traditional 5% level, indicating that 0 is not contained
in the 95% bootstrap CI. Dashed lines represent non-significant relationships. Shortened versions: CI – 95%
bootstrap confidence intervals.

reported by studies performed in other languages, which also considered the mean
number of the three longest utterances produced by the children (Marjanovič-Umek
et al., 2017; Trudeau & Sutton, 2011). Because our sample was not followed after age
2;6, we cannot determine whether a deceleration and a plateau in MLLUw also
occurs in European Portuguese after age 3;0, as observed in other languages (Rice
et al., 2006; Scarborough et al., 1986). Future longitudinal studies with European
Portuguese speakers should extend the time period covered by the assessments such
that the presence of a plateau in MLLUw growth can be investigated.
The results also indicate that an exponential growth function with a linear form on
time best describes sentence complexity growth during the period 1;4–2;6, and the
comparison with traditional polynomials indicates that the curve is almost flat until
age 1;9, given that the production of sentences is limited before that age.
Additionally, the individual trajectories appear very diverse. This finding reflects the
large variability in the acquisition of syntax that has been observed in toddlers at
these age stages (Silva et al., 2017; Szagun, Steinbrink, Franik, & Stumper, 2006).
The results of this study also indicate that there is relative stability in vocabulary and
grammar abilities over time. This finding is consistent with other studies indicating the
presence of a certain stability in language development; thus, one of the best predictors
of a child’s linguistic abilities is his/her level in the same variable at a previous
time-point (Bornstein & Putnick, 2012; Marjanovič-Umek et al., 2017). Almost all
correlations used as a measure of stability were significant. However, the correlations
involving the sentence complexity scores at the age of 1;4 were non-significant. As
observed in other languages using similar instruments (e.g., Pérez-Pereira & Resches,
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 Journal of Child Language 21

2011), the sentence complexity subscale had a ‘floor effect’ during the first few months,
and several zero scores were obtained. This floor effect may explain why the sentence
complexity scores at age 1;4 were not correlated with the same scores in the
following assessment time, indicating that the sentence complexity scores at this
age stage, as measured by the PT-CDI-WS, are not informative for future language
development. Although the particular instrument used to measure sentence
complexity should be considered when interpreting these results, we can relate these
results to those of studies based on spontaneous production that note rapid syntactic
development at approximately age 2;0 that increases between ages 2;0 and 3;0,
particularly in subordination and related structures (e.g., Santos et al., 2013, and
Soares, 2006, for European Portuguese).
The second goal of our study was to investigate whether the development of
vocabulary, MLLUw, and sentence complexity varies as a function of the toddlers’
gender and parental education levels. The results of our study indicate a marginally
significant gender effect favoring girls on the growth curve of vocabulary. More
accelerated growth in vocabulary was observed among the girls compared to that
observed among the boys, which has been reported in other studies investigating
children in this phase of language acquisition (Bauer, Goldfield, & Reznick, 2002;
Huttenlocher et al., 1991). However, no significant effects of gender were found on
the grammar measures –MLLUw and sentence complexity. Possibly, the low number
of sentences produced by children at such early ages hinders the gender gap in
language skills that has been profusely described in the literature, given that this gap
seems to increase with age (e.g., Eriksson et al., 2011).
This study also indicated that the vocabulary and grammar growth curves were
similar for toddlers from mothers with different educational levels. Although some
studies on vocabulary development have obtained results similar to ours (e.g.,
Marjanovič-Umek et al., 2017), the bulk of research has suggested that maternal
educational levels play a role in the development of lexical skills (e.g., Pan et al.,
2005; Rowe et al., 2012). However, most of the research supporting the existence of
this effect has been conducted in the United States, and thus, there is a possibility
that it is not universal. One recent cross-sectional study with European Portuguese-
speaking toddlers found significant differences in the mean number of words
produced by toddlers of mothers with different educational levels, but the differences
were, in fact, negligible (Cadime et al., 2018). Therefore, it is possible that some
characteristics of the Portuguese context, such as the higher social and educational
support provided by the state or the lower gap between socioeconomic levels,
compared to that of the United States, lead to a smaller effect of SES on children’s
lexical skills. However, our results should not be interpreted as an indicator that the
characteristics of the family environment, particularly the mothers’ characteristics, do
not play a role in toddlers’ linguistic development over time. Several studies have
demonstrated that a mother’s language skills, literacy practices, responsiveness, and
quantity and diversity of input provided to her children are good predictors of
children’s language development (Masur, Flynn, & Eichorst, 2005; Pan et al., 2005).
In fact, previous studies suggest that maternal educational levels are closely related to
the type of interactions and language use that mothers establish with their children
(for example, more input and lexical diversity in child-directed speech), which is in
turn correlated with more advanced language skills (including vocabulary and
grammar) in children from more educated mothers than those in their peers from
mothers with lower educational levels (for a review, see Hoff, 2006). These findings
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 22 Cadime et al.

have been interpreted as an indicator that the relationship between maternal education
and children’s educational levels are mediated by the mothers’ linguistic abilities,
language use, and interactions with the child. More importantly, Pan et al. (2005)
conducted a study involving low-income families and indicated that the effects of
maternal education on toddlers’ vocabulary were less important than the mothers’
language and literacy skills. Therefore, considering only the maternal educational
level may be misleading because a more complete picture requires knowledge of
mothers’ abilities, interactions, and practices with their children. Studies on
child-directed speech and mothers’ interactions and practices with their children
conducted in the Portuguese population are therefore needed, as these studies might
help explain children’s lexical and grammar development given that maternal
education per se seems to be a poor predictor.
The final goal of this study was to explore the longitudinal relationships between
vocabulary and the two grammar measures. As expected, vocabulary was a significant
predictor of MLLUw at age 1;9, but the relationship between vocabulary and
sentence complexity was completely mediated by MLLUw. This finding can be
explained by the stage of grammar development: at age 1;9, most children are
starting to produce their first word combinations and sentences; therefore, the scores
obtained for sentence complexity are highly dependent on MLLUw. However, at
age 2;1, vocabulary predicted both MLLUw and sentence complexity, and the
relationship between vocabulary and MLLUw was only partially mediated. Our
results also indicated that vocabulary at age 1;4 predicts vocabulary and sentence
complexity four months later. The close relationship between expressive vocabulary
and the size and complexity of the sentences produced by toddlers has been largely
reported in both cross-sectional (Fenson et al., 2007; Mariscal et al., 2007;
Marjanovič-Umek et al., 2013; Silva et al., 2017) and longitudinal (Marjanovič-Umek
et al., 2017; Trudeau & Sutton, 2011) studies. Our findings add to this body of
research, showing that lexical skills explain a large portion of the unique variance in
morphosyntactic development not only in languages such as English, but also in a
language such as European Portuguese, with different properties, including those
associated with richer overt morphology. In our study, MLLUw was a significant
predictor of sentence complexity at both ages 1;9 and 2;1, but some researchers have
argued that the relationship between MLU, measured in either words or morphemes,
and syntactic complexity is unpredictable after age 2;0, and that MLU cannot
discriminate syntactic development profiles (Klee & Fitzgerald, 1985). Future studies
should explore whether the measure of utterance length used in our study (MLLUw)
maintains a close relationship with sentence complexity past age 2;1.
Taken together, our findings suggest that, at such an early phase of language
development, a larger size of a toddler’s lexicon corresponds to higher probabilities of
producing longer utterances and more complex sentences. Given that we explored data
collected using the European Portuguese version of the CDI, which includes subscales to
globally evaluate vocabulary and syntactic complexity, our goal was to investigate general
effects of lexical growth on grammatical growth; contrasting the one-dimensional and
two-dimensional models of language was not our goal (for a discussion on the problem
of looking for specific effects of the lexicon on grammar, see Pérez-Leroux et al., 2012),
and our findings can be generally accommodated by both perspectives.
The main limitation of this study is the exclusive use of parental reports to collect data
about children’s linguistic abilities. Studies have demonstrated that scores obtained using
parental reports, such as the CDI, are reliable and valid and may even provide a more
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 Journal of Child Language 23

complete picture of children’s linguistic abilities than other methods because parents
observe their children in diverse situations and contexts (Fenson et al., 2007; Law &
Roy, 2008; Pérez-Pereira & Resches, 2011). However, the stability indicators (i.e., the
correlations between assessment time-points) can be inflated when the language
measures are drawn from the same informant (mother or father) and when the same
measures are used over time (Bornstein & Putnick, 2012). Future studies should
consider including measures of spontaneous speech to investigate whether the findings
differ across different measures of toddlers’ linguistic abilities.
Author ORCIDs. Irene Cadime, 0000-0001-8285-4824; Célia S. Moreira, 0000-0001-5602-7171; Ana
Lúcia Santos, 0000-0003-4758-7462

Acknowledgements. This research was supported by European Regional Development Fund (FEDER)
through the European program COMPETE (Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors),
under the National Strategic Reference Framework (QREN) - FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-029556, by FCT
(Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia PTDC/MHC-PED/4725/2012), and by the Research Centre on
Child Studies (CIEC-UM, reference POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007562). The first and fourth authors are
also supported by grants SFRH/BPD/102549/2014 and SFRH/BD/86795/2012 from FCT.

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Appendix

Count data and negative binomial models

Count data refer to observations of non-negative integer values ranging from zero to some greater
undetermined value (Hilbe, 2014). The distribution of counts is discrete, non-negative, and usually has
a high number of zeros. Poisson regression is the most famous method used to address count data.
Basically, this method assumes that errors follow a Poisson distribution and uses a log link, where the
coefficients estimated by the model refer to the natural logarithm of the response variable. In particular,
the response variable is modeled through an exponential function.
In the Poisson model, the mean and variance of the errors are assumed to be equal, a phenomenon
known as equi-dispersion. However, for many real data (including the data from this study), the
variance of the errors is larger than the mean, which is called ‘over-dispersion’. In this case, a more
general distribution is needed. The negative binomial distribution is probably the most popular general
form of the Poisson distribution (Hilbe, 2014), which allows an additional parameter known as the
dispersion parameter. For more details on negative binomial modeling, see Hilbe (2014).

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 Journal of Child Language 27

Figure A1. Example of polynomial graphs.

Polynomials
Given a variable x, a polynomial on x is a mathematical expression that can be written as:

p(x) = a0 + a1 x + a2 x2 + a3 x3 + ... + an xn

where a0, … , an are real numbers, an is non-vanishing, and n is a natural number determining the degree

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 28 Cadime et al.

Figure A2. Graphical representation of a semi-parabola and a semi-cubic.

of the polynomial. Polynomials of degree 1 are called ‘linear’, those of degree 2 are called ‘quadratic’, and
those of degree 3 are called ‘cubic’.
From the graphical point of view, a linear polynomial y = ax + b is represented by a straight line in
the (x,y) plane. When x = 0 then y = b, which means that the point (0,b) belongs to the line. Thus, b is
the value where the line intersects the y-axis and is frequently called the INTERCEPT. Figure A1-(a)
outlines the influence of this parameter on the position of the line. Parameter a is called the SLOPE or
rate of change. When the slope is positive, an increasing tendency is observed; when it is negative,
the tendency is decreasing. Figure A1-(b) illustrates the influence of this parameter on the position
of the line.
Graphically, a quadratic polynomial y = ax 2 + bx + c is outlined by a parabola. Parameter a measures the
‘thickness’ of the parabola, as exemplified in Figure A1-(c), and stipulates the opening direction (concavity):
when a is positive, the parabola opens up; when a is negative, the parabola opens down. Every quadratic
polynomial can be written in the form y = a(x-h)2 + k. This formula is useful for identifying the vertex of
the parabola, which is the point (h,k), as illustrated in Figure A1-(d).
Regarding the cubic y = ax 3 + bx 2 + cx + d, graphically it can have two main different forms, depending
on the existence of a local maximum. See Figure A1-(e) for an example of these two forms. As in the
previous cases, parameters dictate the shape and position of the curve.
Interpreting the independent variable x as time and the dependent variable y as distance, it is interesting
to analyze the SPEED (i.e., rate of change of distance with respect to time) and ACCELERATION (i.e., rate of
change of velocity with respect to time) at different time-points. For example, in a linear polynomial,
the speed is the same at all points, and the acceleration is null. In a quadratic polynomial, the speed is
null only at the origin and becomes greater moving away from it (in absolute terms); however, the
acceleration is the same at all points. In the cubic, the situation varies depending on the existence of a
local maximum (and minimum). For example, in the cubic y = x 3 depicted in Figure A1-(e), the origin
is a point where both the speed and acceleration vanish. At all the other time-points the speed is
positive; however, the acceleration is negative when x < 0 and positive when x > 0. Regarding the cubic
y = – x 3–2x2 + 3x + 4 from the same figure, the acceleration changes from negative to positive when
x = –2/3, and therefore, this is an inflection point.

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 Journal of Child Language 29
To conclude, a comparison between the semi-parabola and the semi-cubic given by y1 = x 2 and y2 = x 3,
respectively, is presented in Figure A2. The acceleration in the quadratic is constant but, in the cubic, it is
not. It is possible to observe that the cubic takes longer time to ‘take off’, that is, the speed and the
acceleration of the cubic is lower at the beginning. However, after reaching x = 1/3, the acceleration of
the cubic becomes higher than the acceleration in the parabola. Additionally, when the time-point x = 2/
3 is attained, the speed of the cubic becomes superior. Notice, additionally, that when restricting
attention only to the time between x = 1 and x = 2, both polynomials can be well approximated by a
straight line.

Cite this article: Cadime I, Moreira CS, Santos AL, Silva C, Ribeiro I, Viana FL (2019). The development of
vocabulary and grammar: a longitudinal study of European Portuguese-speaking toddlers. Journal of Child
Language 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000919000060

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Eugene McDermott Library, University of Texas at Dallas, on 14 Mar 2019 at 11:51:12,
subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000919000060