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Language Impairment in Multilingual Settings: LITMUS in action across Europe
Edited by Sharon Armon-Lotem and Kleanthes K. Grohmann
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 29] 2021
► pp. 99–130

Lexical diversity in bilingual speakers of Croatian and Italian

| University of Zagreb
| University of Padua

The aim of this study was to determine whether measures of lexical diversity (LD) can be used to assess general lexical knowledge. This study focused on 30 sequential Croatian/Italian bilinguals aged between 5 and 7 years, who were compared with 30 Croatian and 30 Italian monolinguals matched in age. LD was assessed from narrative language samples using standard measures and compared with Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) results. Two LD measures, the type-token ratio (TTR) and Maas Index based on TTR transformation, did not differentiate between bilinguals and monolinguals, whereas several other did: total number of words (NTW), number of different words (NDW), measure D, moving average type-token ratio (MATTR) and hypergeometric diversity of D (HD-D). NTW, NDW, D, MATTR and HD-D were predictive of PPVT results for monolinguals, whereas NDW, TNW and D (with replacements, Dr) were predictive of PPVT results for bilinguals. Our results suggest that LD measures can be reliable measures of bilinguals’ vocabulary knowledge and can adequately reflect PPVT results in languages other than English.

Keywords: bilingualism, lexical diversity, cross-language associations
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1LD measures
    • 2.2LD measures in bilingual research
    • 2.3Croatian and Italian language features
    • 2.4Aims of the study
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials
      • 3.2.1Language samples
      • 3.2.2LD indices
      • 3.2.3Vocabulary test
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1PPVT
    • 4.2Quantitative LD measures
    • 4.3TTR and its transformations
    • 4.4Model-based indices
    • 4.5Correlations among measures
    • 4.6LD measures as predictors of PPVT performance
    • 4.7Analyses of differences across languages in bilinguals
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 18 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.29.04hrz
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