MPI Colloquium Prof. Dr. Kathy Rastle

What words do children and young people encounter when they read for pleasure?

Abstract

It has long been known that gaining print experience is a vital part of becoming a skilled reader.  However, less is known about the nature of the language that children and young people encounter when they read for pleasure.  In this presentation, I’ll be talking about what we’ve learned from the development and analysis of the Children and Young People’s Books Lexicon (CYP-LEX), a corpus of 1200 books popular with British children aged 7-16.  I’ll focus primarily on (a) the nature of the vocabulary in these books and why it presents both an opportunity and a challenge for readers; and (b) the presence of morphologically-complex words in these books and the extent to which this may facilitate morphological learning.  I’ll conclude by talking about how book language differs from spoken language and why this matters for thinking about language and language development.