Background: Lexical-semantic development for preschool children has several applications in research design, assessment, and intervention that were very difficult to obtain before. In English and most Indo-European languages, there is a long tradition of examining aspects of child language by computing different developmental indices from spontaneous language samples and through applying different language tests. However, for the Arabic language, these aspects are lacking in this valuable area of research. Bridging this gap, this work provided the first comprehensive study of the Arabic language lexical-semantic development among preschool Egyptian Arabic speaking children.
Aim of the work: to provide a descriptive profile of the lexical-semantic development among the preschool Egyptian Arabic-speaking children.
Subjects and methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted on 120 typically developed Egyptian Arabic-speaking children. Children were randomly selected by inclusion and exclusion criteria in the age range between 2-4 years. Children were assessed by the lexical-semantic subtest of the standardized Egyptian Arabic Semantic Test (EAST). Children's total score and scores of the receptive and expressive aspects of the lexical-semantic subtest of EAST were calculated and compared to determine the development of the lexical-semantic among the 4 age-groups.
Results: A statistically significant difference was found between lexical-semantic growth among the 4 age groups. Lexical semantic growth is positively correlated to the chronological age of the participated children.
Conclusion: The lexical-semantic develops as early as the age of 2 years. Noun classes and verbs started to be identified by children at the age of 2 years. As children grow; noun vocabulary increases both expressively and receptively. Adjectives started to be acquired at age of 2.6 to 3 years and were mostly identified by the age of 3 to 3.6 years.