> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9780262045100
  • Imprint: MIT Press Academic
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $160.00

Variability and Consistency in Early Language Learning

The Wordbank Project




A data-driven exploration of how children's language learning varies across different languages, providing both a theoretical framework and reference.

A data-driven exploration of how children's language learning varies across different languages, providing both a theoretical framework and reference.

The Wordbank Project examines variability and consistency in children's language learning across different languages and cultures, drawing on Wordbank, an open database with data from more than 75,000 children and twenty-nine languages or dialects. This big data approach makes the book the most comprehensive cross-linguistic analysis to date of early language learning. Moreover, its data-driven picture of which aspects of language learning are consistent across languages suggests constraints on the nature of children's language learning mechanisms. The book provides both a theoretical framework for scholars of language learning, language, and human cognition, and a resource for future research.

  • Published: 1 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9780262045100
  • Imprint: MIT Press Academic
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $160.00

Praise for Variability and Consistency in Early Language Learning

"The author proposes ambitious comparisons... that might become a milestone in the field of child development." -- Professor Angelo Cangelosi

"Inspires researchers to ask questions the might not have otherwise asked." --Professor Gary Lupyan

"Provides a means for researchers to conduct such meta-analyses through access to its compiled CDI dataset. This work thus significantly contributes to the field by providing a large resource bank for researchers in the same field to use and share data to answer research questions more comprehensively" --Professor Alice H. D. Chan