Lexical development in dutch-turkish sequential bilingual children

This prospective longitudinal study was designed to investigate the individual differences in the lexical development of 20 Dutch-Turkish sequential bilingual children between the age of 2;0 and 2;06. A secondary goal of this study was to examine if the lexical proficiency in Turkish (L1) at preschool age can be seen as a predictor of the proficiency in Dutch (L2). In the first stage, quantitative (standardized parental checklist) and qualitative measures (anamnesis, interview with parents) were used to assess the children’s receptive and productive vocabulary in Turkish (L1). The results show how extralinguistic factors such as language exposure and language input at home relate to the lexical development of the children in L1. Based on these results we divided the children in two groups: (1) high level of lexical proficiency in Turkish (L1), (2) low level of lexical proficiency in Turkish (L1). We predict that the low lexical proficiency in L1 will be a marker for the lexical proficiency in L2 (Dutch) after one year of education in Dutch (L2). To this end, the receptive and productive vocabulary in both languages at the age of 3;06-4;0 will be assessed in the next stage of this longitudinal study.status: publishe