Validation study demonstrates reliable vocabulary tracking in young Tseltal learners, highlighting a scalable instrument for indigenous language assessment.
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.
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Casillas et al. (2024) studied this question.
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