Gastronomic vocabulary in Costa Rican children's language

Abstract

This study identifies the children's gastronomic vocabulary through three sources of information: the linguistic corpus of children's language from research project 745-B6-320, INIL-UCR, the results of interviews applied to retailers about the food demands of children, the results of interviews applied to children and to their respective teachers. The lexical inventory obtained consists of names: candies, fruits, prepared foods, beverages, vegetables, meats, dairy products, cereals, trade names, condiments and food preparation ingredients. This lexical inventory is useful for different disciplines, including: preschool education, food industry, nutrition, applied linguistics, educational and clinical linguistics.
Key Words: children's vocabulary, food names, gastronomic vocabulary, language acquisition.