Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

EARLY VERBS IN BILINGUAL ACQUISITION
4. Results 2 - Main verbs
4.1 Internal class frequency distribution
We have seen that VTTR values are in the mid-to-low range, comparable to
TTR. In each case, this reflects a compromise between high and low TTR
items in the class of main verbs. TTR is basically a property of individual
words, and so we now look at the main verbs themselves.
To illustrate, Sonja’s English sample at 2;3 shows a VTTR of 0.26.
Many distinct type-token distributions could yield this result, but Table 4c
shows a striking frequency gradient among the constituent verb types:
Table 4c. Sonja, English, sample at 2;3: main verb types and tokens
Verb types Tokens
want 16
sleep 5
be 4
put 3
swim 2
do 1
look 1
sit 1
go 1
Class TTR 0.26
We can then ask what proportion of verb class tokens each verb type
accounts for. This allows us to compare verb class samples of different sizes
in terms of their spectra of relative token frequency; in these terms, it is clear
from the data that the first four frequency ranks contain most of the variation.
4.2 Verb profiles
We now ask: What verbs inhabit the higher-frequency ranks? For this we look
just at the first four most frequent verbs for each sample: to the extent that
there is comparability of verb selection across samples, we should find it here.
See Tables 5a-b for Maija’s Latvian and English verbs.
Table 5a has 16 verbs in all: these represent a quarter of all the types in the
250-word samples, but around three-quarters of the tokens.
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