The relationship between first language (L1) and second language (L2) lexical development in young Turkish-German children

ABSTRACT

Lexical development in first language (L1) Turkish and second language (L2) German in two- to three-year-old children was examined, using parental vocabulary checklists in Turkish and in German. Children showed strong Turkish dominance in the number of lexical items they produced, which was due to the more frequent exposure to Turkish and higher quality of the input. Their vocabulary in Turkish and German comprised a largely different conceptual make-up, as evidenced by a high conceptual count of items across languages. Translation equivalents made up around 10% of the Total Vocabulary. An exemplary analysis of six noun categories showed that the more domestically oriented categories (Furniture, People) were represented more strongly in Turkish vocabularies, while the Food and Drink category contributed equally to both languages. In Turkish, 18% of words were verbs, whereas in German, verbs constituted only 7% of the children’s vocabularies. A comparison between the parent checklists TIGE (developed for Turkish monolingual children in Turkey) and TILDA (developed for Turkish children growing up in Germany) revealed conceptual differences, which can be attributed to culture-specific developments and use of specific lexical items in the two countries. Therefore, language- and culture-specific instruments should be used to assess early vocabulary skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Communicative development inventories (CDI)
• Turkish-German bilinguals
• lexical development
• conceptual vocabulary
• translation equivalents

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participating families for their time and effort in filling out the checklists. We would also like to thank Henriette Stoll and Marifet Kaya for help with data acquisition and entry. Funding for the study was provided by the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz to Tanja Rinker. The development of TILDA was supported by the Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg (Steffi Sachse).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Tanja Rinker is the Director of the Center for Multilingualism and a researcher at the Zukunftskolleg/Department of Linguistics at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Her work focuses on bi- and multilingual language development including investigations of phonological and morphosyntactic processing at the neurophysiological level as well as language assessment and intervention.

Nora Budde-Spengler has been a research associate since 2008 in different studies about the effectiveness of language training with bilingual children, early diagnosis of language delays in bilingual children and in EEG studies with bilinguals. She currently works at the ZNL TransferCentre of Neuroscience and Learning, University of Ulm, and the Center for Multiingualism, University of Konstanz.

Steffi Sachse is a professor of developmental psychology with a focus on language development at the University of Education, Heidelberg. Her research interests include early language development and impairments, their diagnosis and further development as well as language intervention within early childhood institutions.