Development of Lexicon of Turkish-French bilingual and Turkish and French monolingual children at primary school


Ertek B.

18. Uluslararası Türk Dilbilim Kurultayı , Adana, Türkiye, 24 - 26 Şubat 2017, ss.1

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Adana
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1
  • Marmara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Lexical development of monolingual (Bassano, 2000, Kern, 2005) and bilingual children (Treffers-Daller et al., 2007; De Houwer, 2009) is a subject for many researches. These studies highlight  conflicting results for the bilingual children having a migratory background (Akıncı, 2006): some studies emphasize delay and shortness in vocabulary compared to the monolingual peers (Ammerlaan et al., 2001), others suggest this delay is linked to the literacy level of bilingual children and their families (Akinci, Jisa & Kern, 2001). Besides for some others, weak competencies are based on personal and socio-cultural factors (Gregory & Williams, 2000).
The main purpose of this paper is to compare the development of the lexicon acquisition of Turkish-French bilingual children in Turkish migrant community living in France in L1 (Turkish) and in L2 (French) and monolingual children in France and Turkey, at primary school (6 to 11 years-old). Our data has been collected through the test program “Wortschatz- Wortfindungstest und für 6 bis 10-Jährige” (Glueck, 2011) with 180 children (90 boys and 90 girls). First created for German, and then adapted for Turkish, this test consists analyzing of the words comprising (use and comprehension) 95 picture naming questions. We also adapted it for French. Tests were done by native speakers of both French and Turkish group and all results were subjected to statistical analyses.
First results have shown good level in Turkish language acquisition for 6-7 years-old bilingual children but distinct improvement in French language for 8-9 years and for 10-11 years-old. We clearly observe lexical development in French which is almost the same with Turkish. In addition to this, our results confirm earlier ones on language development (Kern, Chenu & Türkay, 2012); that the answers given by bilingual children aged 6-7 consist of only verbs, and children aged 10-11 can produce full sentences with adequate adjectives.