A vocabulary checklist for early lexical development in Tseltal
- Marisa Casillas
(University of Chicago)
- Ruthe Foushee
(The New School for Social Science)
- Humbertina Gómez Pérez (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Sureste)
- Juan Méndez Girón (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Sureste)
- Gilles Polian
(Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Sureste)
- Kennedy Casey
(Princeton University)
- Penelope Brown (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)
Abstract
This study presents a checklist for measuring the expressive vocabularies of young children acquiring the Mayan language Tseltal. Adapted from the US English MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories and tested with 84 Tseltal-acquiring children (9–23 months), this Tseltal checklist shows desired within- and across-subcategory variability in age of acquisition, expected age- and gender-related change, and typical patterns of relative over- and under-representation in the most cross-linguistically stable domains. We discuss potential uses of the checklist and the next steps in its future development.
Keywords: vocabulary checklist, parent report, Tseltal, Mayan
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Funding
- Name
- NSF CAREER Award
- Funding ID
- 2238609
Published on
2025-08-03
Peer Reviewed