A Study on the Lexical Diversity of Korean-Chinese Bilingual Children

한국어·중국어 이중 언어 사용 아동의 어휘 다양성

This study aimed at investigating the lexical diversity in the "Frog Story" narratives of Korean-Chinese bilingual children. Six bilingual speakers of Korean children- four boys and two girls- were audio recorded as they produced narratives based on pictures from the Mercer Mayer book "Frog, where are you?" The order of narration was counterbalanced. The vocabularies from narratives were analyzed by type, token, TTR (type-token Ratio) and D value using the CLAN (Computerized Language Analysis) program. The findings showed that the pattern of lexical diversity in Korean is similar with the Chinese, but the TTR and D value of Chinese still remain low in comparison with those of Korean. In addition, Korean language seems to have significant influence on Chinese in the language usage pattern and vice versa.