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Part of
Atypical Language Development in Romance Languages
Edited by Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla, Lucía Buil-Legaz, Raúl López-Penadés, Victor A. Sanchez-Azanza and Daniel Adrover-Roig
[Not in series 223] 2019
► pp. 201–217

The relationship between the lexicon and grammar in Spanish-speaking children with Down syndrome

| Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, , México
| Universidad de Málaga, , España
| Universidad de Málaga, , España

A strong association between early vocabulary comprehension and production has been shown in typically developing children (TD), and there is robust evidence for a lexicon-grammar association. These relations have been inconsistent in children with Down Syndrome (DS). In this study, ten Spanish-speaking children with DS were observed for vocabulary comprehension, production and initial morphosyntax using a parental report, the Down-CDI. Results showed high individual differences and developmental patterns were not similar to the literature of children with TD. The relation between vocabulary size, composition, sentence length and complexity was inconsistent. Thus, some developmental patterns of TD children are similar in children with DS. There is an association between grammar and vocabulary at the general level, but not within specific components.

Keywords: lexicon, grammar, Down Syndrome, Spanish
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Lexical-grammatical relationships in children with Down Syndrome (DS)
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Instruments
    • Procedure
    • Data analysis
  • Results
    • Associations between vocabulary and grammar
    • Vocabulary composition and vocabulary levels
    • Grammatical word types relationships to grammatical structures in Group 2
  • Discussion
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 11 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.223.12jac
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