A vocabulary checklist for early lexical development in Tseltal

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.