The Relationship between First Language (L1) and Second Language (L2) Lexical Development in Young Turkish-German Children.

ABSTRACTLexical 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 (develop...