Verb diversity and grammatical outcomes

What is it about?

The absence of verbs in spontaneous speech at age 2 has been identified as a “red flag” for language impairment. However, general expectations for verb lexicon size and verb diversity in spontaneous speech are not available to guide clinical practice. In this study, we provide expectations for verb growth from 21 to 30 months and show that measures of verb size and diversity in spontaneous speech at 24 months are better predictors of 30-month grammatical outcomes than the comparable measures for nouns.

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Why is it important?

Our findings indicated that verb diversity at 24 months was the best predictor of grammatical complexity at 30 months. This underscores the importance of selecting lexical verbs as targets of early language intervention. Because verbs are a critical component of sentence structure, a verb-focused intervention may also facilitate grammatical development.