Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, Bartłomiej Etenkowski, Tanja Rinker, Pascale Engel de Abreu, Nelly Ann Fritsche, Olga Nenonen, Elma Blom, Sharon Armon-Lotem, Anna Gavarró, Kamila Polišenská, Magdalena Łuniewska, Özlem Ünal-Logacev, Chiara Levorato, Shula Chiat, Bjarke Sund Kronqvist, Daniela Slančová, Agnė Blažienė, Darinka Anđelković, Ciara O'Toole, Maja Savić, Gisela Håkansson, Ineta Dabašinskienė, Kristine M. Jensen de López, Myriam Cantú Sánchez, Ewa Haman, Pınar Ege, Inger Anne Ehret, Daniela Gatt, Maja Roch, Natalia Gagarina, Theodoros Marinis, Maša Popović, Maria Kambanaros, Tessel Boerma, Frenette Southwood, Sari Kunnari, Siobhán Nic Fhlannchadha, B. Janssen, Svetlana Kapalková, Tina Hickey, Natalia Ringblom, Barbara Pomiechowska, Elin Thordardottir, Luniewska, Magdalena, Haman, Ewa, Armon-Lotem, Sharon, Etenkowski, Bartlomiej, Kambanaros, Maria, Unal-Logacev, Ozlem, Leerstoel Leseman, Education and Learning: Cognitive and Motor Disabilities, Anadolu Üniversitesi, Haman, Ewa/0000-0003-1615-711X, Marinis, Theodoros/0000-0002-4120-3141, Luniewska, Magdalena/0000-0001-5504-9766, Hickey, Tina M./0000-0003-1711-0727, Pomiechowska, Barbara/0000-0002-3819-7641, Gavarro Alguero, Anna/0000-0003-2373-7243, Nenonen, Olga/0000-0003-3967-6684, Kunnari, Sari/0000-0001-5290-4851, Gatt, Daniela/0000-0003-2871-1122, and KAMBANAROS, MARIA/0000-0002-5857-9460
WOS: 000382653900026, PubMed ID: 26276517, We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters' social or language status, but not with the raters' age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes., Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education [809/N-COST/2010/0]; Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, This study was designed as part of a multilingual parallel construction procedure of the LITMUS Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks within the networking program COSTAction IS0804 "Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment" (www.bi-sli.org; 2010-2013). The research (website design and maintenance) was supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Grant No. 809/N-COST/2010/0, awarded to the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, in cooperation with Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University; Principal Investigators: Ewa Haman & Zofia Wodniecka). We are grateful to all assistants who contributed to participant recruitment and to all informants in the 25 languages who participated in the study.