The words children learn: Evidence against a noun bias in early vocabularies. Bloom, L., Tinker, E., & Margulis, C. Cogn Devel, 8(4):431–450, 1993.
abstract   bibtex   
Examined the status of object words in children's developing vocabularies. 14 infants were followed from 9 mo to about 2 yrs of age, and monthly vocabulary growth was analyzed with the children equated for both onset and achievement in word learning. The main result was that object words represented approximately one third, on average, of the different words the children learned. Nouns could be considered the largest part of speech in their vocabularies only if other part-of-speech category assignments were valid or even possible, neither of which was the case for presyntactic vocabularies. It is concluded that object-specific lexical principles cannot explain word learning, if most of the words a child learns are other than names for objects.
@Article{Bloom1993,
  author   = {Bloom, Lois and Tinker, Erin and Margulis, Cheryl},
  journal  = {Cogn Devel},
  title    = {The words children learn: {E}vidence against a noun bias in early vocabularies},
  year     = {1993},
  number   = {4},
  pages    = {431--450},
  volume   = {8},
  abstract = {Examined the status of object words in children's developing vocabularies.
	14 infants were followed from 9 mo to about 2 yrs of age, and monthly
	vocabulary growth was analyzed with the children equated for both
	onset and achievement in word learning. The main result was that
	object words represented approximately one third, on average, of
	the different words the children learned. Nouns could be considered
	the largest part of speech in their vocabularies only if other part-of-speech
	category assignments were valid or even possible, neither of which
	was the case for presyntactic vocabularies. It is concluded that
	object-specific lexical principles cannot explain word learning,
	if most of the words a child learns are other than names for objects.},
}

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