Parent use of content words to Hebrew-speaking children at different stages of language development

•In Hebrew CDS, verb use is similar to or higher than noun use by parents at all developmental stages.•Analysis reveals changes in the use of content words in parents CDS depending on the child's linguistic stage.•Parents change their use of content words to accommodate their child's linguistic development.•The findings strengthen the claim of reciprocal relations in parent-child dyads.

Lexical categories of CDS were examined among 40 Hebrew-speaking parents of infants in early pre-verbal, late-preverbal, single-word and early grammar stages during spontaneous parent-infant interactions. Two hundred utterances from each sample were transcribed, coded for types and tokens, and analyzed. Findings demonstrated a significant growth in types of content words from early to late pre-verbal stages, significant decline at the single-word stage, and an increase at the early grammar stage. Apparently, parents change their use of content words to accommodate their child's linguistic development, attesting to dynamic/reciprocal parent-child interactions. Additionally, findings support that verb use is similar to or higher than noun use by parents at all developmental stages.