Juska-Bacher, Britta; Röthlisberger, Martina (2021). Das Konstrukt Wortschatz: Dimension(en) Umfang und Tiefe? Emprische Ergebnisse aus der Unterstufe. Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée, 113, pp. 49-68.

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Vocabulary breadth and depth are considered as two dimensions of individual word knowledge. However, it is still unclear which aspects the vocabulary depth encompasses and whether in practice the dimensions can be clearly distinguished. In this article, we approach these questions using data from a longitudinal study with about 300 children from first to third grade. In addition to vocabulary breadth, we measured semantic word knowledge and network knowledge as aspects of vocabulary depth. Correlations between the three vocabulary measures increase slightly over time, but are still only moderately strong, indicating that the three variables should be kept separate. Factor analyses indicated two distinct vocabulary factors for all grades, with semantic word knowledge loading on a different factor than the other two measures. For children of early primary school age, a separation of the dimensions vocabulary breadth and depth and a breakdown of depth into different aspects is helpful to explain variation in individual word knowledge.

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