This study addresses the relationship between phonological complexity and vocabulary size in fifteen 30-month-old Swedish children, selected to cover a wide range of reported lexical development. It is a follow-up of earlier studies indicating a relationship between phonological and lexical development in children and how it is affected by the ambient linguistic input. Phonological complexity of content words uttered by the children was computed by using a Swedish adaptation of Stoel-Gammons Word Complexity Measure. Speech data from recordings of parent-child conversations were related to parent-reported vocabulary size data collected with the Swedish version of McArthur-Bates CDI. The results indicate that phonological complexity increases with vocabulary size. Implications for intervention to children with language impairment are discussed.

Index Terms: phonological development, lexical development, phonological complexity, parental input, parent-child interaction