Features of lexical richness in children’s books - Comparisons with child-directed speech

Sep 29, 2026

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Access to children’s books through shared reading provides rich linguistic input in early childhood. To clarify how book language supports learning, the study compares children’s book language with everyday child-directed speech. A picture-book corpus of 160 texts (about 320,000 words) is analyzed against child-directed speech from 10 CHILDES UK corpora (about 3.8 million words). Lexical richness measures, part-of-speech distributions, and structural properties show book language is denser, more diverse, and contains more rare word types. Nouns and adjectives predominate in books, pronouns in speech; book words are more complex, later acquired, more abstract, and more emotionally arousing.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages45

Reading Time1 h 53 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Shared reading as linguistic input

Modality differences between written and spoken language

Lexical and structural patterns in children’s books

Features of lexical richness in children’s books: Comparisons with child-directed speech Nicola Dawson Yaling Hsiao Alvin Wei Ming Tan University of Oxford, UK Nilanjana Banerji Oxford University Press, UK Kate Nation University of Oxford, UK Abstract: Access to children’s books via shared reading may be a particularly rich source of linguistic input in the early years. To understand how exposure to book language supports children’s learning, it is important to identify how book language differs to everyday conversation. We created a picture book corpus from 160 texts commonly read to children aged 0-5 years (around 320,000 words) . We first quantified how the language of children’s books differs from childdirected speech (compiled from 10 corpora in the CHILDES UK database, around 3.8 million words) on measures of lexical richness (diversity, density, sophistication), part of speech distributions, and structural properties. We also identified the words occurring in children’s books that are most uniquely representative of book language. We found that children’s book language is lexically denser, more lexically diverse, and comprises a larger proportion of rarer word types compared to child-directed speech. Nouns and adjectives are more common in book language whereas pronouns are more common in child-directed speech. Book words are more structurally complex in relation to both number of phonemes and morphological structure. They are also later acquired, more abstract, and more emotionally arousing than the words more common in child-directed speech. Written language provides unique linguistic input even in the pre-school years, well before children can read for themselves. Keywords: lexical richness; book language; child-directed speech; language acquisition; literacy Corresponding author: Nicola Dawson, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Anna Watts Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6GG, United Kingdom. Email: nicola.daw[son@psy.ox.ac.uk](son@psy.ox.ac.uk). ORCID IDs: Nicola Dawson [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7167-6081](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7167-6081); Yaling Hsiao [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3986-](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3986-)[ ](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3986-)5178; Alvin Wei Ming Tan [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5551-7507](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5551-7507); Kate Nation [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5048-](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5048-)[ ](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5048-)6107 Citation: Dawson, N., Hsiao, Y., Tan, A.W.M., Banerji, N., & Nation, K. (2021) . Features of lexical richness in childrenʼs books: Comparisons with child-directed speech. Language Development Research, 1(1), p 9-53. DOI: 10.34842/5we1-yk94 Introduction Children learn from the language they hear (e.g., Cameron-Faulkner et al., 2003; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013) . Evidence from longitudinal studies and computational modelling shows that children who experience greater amounts of sophisticated and diverse child-directed talk develop larger vocabularies and better reading skills, and are at an advantage in early school achievement (Chang & Monaghan, 2019; Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003; Huttenlocher et al., 1991, 2010; Jones & Rowland, 2017; Pan et al., 2005; Rowe, 2008, 2012) . Yet children’s language experiences in the early years vary widely. These differences have been linked to caregiver language competence and socio-economic status (Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003; Huttenlocher et al., 2010; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013), but language use may vary within, as well as between, home environments. Shared reading might bea particularly important source of language input, not least because it elicits more complex language and more words per minute from caregivers compared to other contexts, such as mealtimes and play (Demir-Lira et al., 2019; Weizman & Snow, 2001) . In this paper we investigate in detail the language of children’s books to spec

FAQs

What data does the study use to compare children’s books and child-directed speech?

It builds a picture-book corpus of 160 commonly read texts for ages 0–5 (about 320,000 words) and compares it with child-directed speech from 10 corpora in the CHILDES UK database (about 3.8 million words).

How does book language differ from child-directed speech in lexical richness?

Children’s book language is lexically denser and more diverse, and it includes a larger proportion of rarer word types than child-directed speech.

What grammatical and structural differences are reported between books and speech?

Nouns and adjectives are more common in book language, while pronouns are more common in child-directed speech. Book words are also more structurally complex in phoneme and morphological terms, and are described as later acquired, more abstract, and more emotionally arousing.

Sep 29, 2026

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