The First Fifty Words.Language Input and Early Verbal Lexicons; .

Over the past few years, the use of \\\\\\\"baby sign\\\\\\\" has become a popular trend. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of manual communication in the acquisition of the first 50 spoken words in typically-developing children. Twelve participants who participated in a six-week baby-sign playgroup were involved in the study. Parents recorded their child?s first 50 words in a diary format. The diary was collected and spontaneous first words were analyzed. The first words of the current sample were then compared to Nelson?s (1973) landmark study on the basis of six grammatical categories. The book investigates how the first 50 spoken word lexicons of typically developing children receiving manual communication input compare to those typically developing children receiving oral input only in terms of: word function, form, and reference.Rate of acquisition and the role of language input in early vocabulary development were also points of curiosity in thisstudy. This preliminary study suggests that language input does in fact play a role in early lexical acquisition and would be of interest to the field of Communication Sciences and Language Specialists.