Phonological complexity and vocabulary size in 30-month-old Swedish children

This study addresses the relationship between phonological complexity and vocabulary size in fifteen 30-month-old Swedish children, selected to cover a wide range of reported lexical development. It is in line with earlier studies indicating a relationship between phonological and lexical development in children and how it is affected by the ambient linguistic input. Phonological complexity of content words uttered by the children was computed by using a Swedish adaptation of StoelGammon’s Word Complexity Measure [1]. Speech data from recordings of parent-child conversations were related to parentreported vocabulary size data collected with the Swedish version of McArthur-Bates CDI [2]. The results indicate that phonological complexity increases with vocabulary size. Implications for parent-based intervention to children with language impairment are discussed.