Introduction
The paper presents one of the first cross-linguistic study of Turkic languages of emotional vocabulary associations among preschool children.
Purpose
An associative experiment with approximately 300 children (4 grade primary school pupil 9-10 years old) speakers of Turkish, Kazakh and Uzbek languages from Bulgaria, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are investigated for associations of 20 emotional stimuli words.
Method
The emotional stimuli words are mixed with other words, but only the words expressing emotions are studied. The experiment is organized in a written form. For this purpose the stimuli words are read to the children and they have 10 sec. to write down the first word that comes to their mind when they hear the words. The present study focuses on 8 emotional stimuli words.
Results
The results of the 8 emotional stimuli words are compared among different Turkic languages. The associative nest of words are compared and analyzed. The similarities and differences to the stimuli words are discussed and connected with the country of residence of the children.
Conclusions
The result from the experiment shows what is the mental lexicon structure of the emotional words of Muslim children speakers of Turkic languages. They map out how words are stored and linked in our brains, revealing the organization of our internal dictionary. The semantic networks and the relationship among the words are found. It shows the linguistic consciousness. Associative fields are built that reflect common cultural and linguistic understandings of words.