The purpose of this study was to investigate whether young children with cleft palate differ from those of noncleft typically developing children in terms of expressive vocabulary size, phonological characteristics and lexical selectivity. A total of 12 children with cleft palate and 12 noncleft children who were matched by age and gender participated in the study. The groups were compared by size of expressive vocabulary reported on Korean version of MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories and the number of different words, consonant inventory, the percentage of words beginning with obstruents and vowels, nasal, and glottal sounds, and the percentage of words which do not include obstruents in a language sample. Also, correlation analysis were performed to examine the relationship between measures on size of expressive vocabulary and phonological characteristics. The results showed that expressive vocabulary size and consonant inventory for children with cleft palate produced significantly smaller than those for noncleft children. Children with cleft palate produced significantly more words beginning with vowel or which do not include obstruents, and fewer words beginning with obstruents than noncleft children. The two groups showed different results on significant correlations between measures on size of expressive vocabulary and phonological characteristics indicating that children with cleft palate show different lexical selectivity from their noncleft peers. The results suggest that children with cleft palate aged 18-30 months demonstrate a slower rate of lexical and phonological development compared with their noncleft peers and they develop lexical selectivity reflecting cleft palate speech. The results will have a clinical implication on speech-language intervention for young children with cleft palates.