CHILDRENS ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE - GENERAL LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE OR DIMENSIONS OF STYLE

Previous studies have described children's acquisition of language as reflecting either a referential or an expressive style. A multivariate approach, characterizing ''referentiality'' and ''expressivity'' as partially dissociable dimensions, is advantageous because it allows children to vary along one dimension as they vary along another, allowing children to have high or low degrees of both characteristics simultaneously. The present study applies multivariate techniques to an ''exploratory'' sample of 87 children, all of whom were 20 months old, and by subsequently validating the exploratory phase with 56 of the original children seen one month later. Using parental reports to assess children's multiword productions, exploratory factor analyses revealed two correlated dimensions of language style which indeed reflected referential and expressive characteristics. Confirmatory factor analyses ''confirmed'' these factors in the test sample. This two-dimensional model of language acquisition was superior to a unidimensional, general linguistic competence model. There is also strong short-term stability for both dimensions across the one-month period.