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In:Second Language Acquisition of Turkish
Edited by Ayşe Gürel
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 59] 2016
► pp. 313–332

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Structural priming in L2 Turkish

A study on possessive noun phrases and noun clauses

ORCiD logo with link | University of Oslo, Center for Multilingualism in Society Across the Lifespan (MultiLing)
Published online: 25 May 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.59.12mer
Structural priming is the facilitation in the processing of a linguistic form due to repetition (Bock 1986). This study investigates structural priming in second language (L2) acquisition of Turkish in relation to the representation of L2 grammar. The linguistic structures investigated are possessive noun phrases (NPs) and noun clauses with nominalized verbs, which share the same external genitive-possessive morpho-syntax in Turkish. Adult L2 learners first read prime sentences, and then completed target fragments. Overall, they produced more possessive NPs than noun clauses. Crucially, they produced more possessive NPs after reading NP primes, and more noun clauses following noun clause primes. This suggests that L2 learners have two distinct mental representations for these structures, rather than a single, unspecified one.
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Romano, Francesco Bryan
2020. Ultimate attainment in heritage language speakers: Syntactic and morphological knowledge of Italian accusative clitics. Applied Psycholinguistics 41:2 ► pp. 347 ff. DOI logo
Mercan, Gözde & Annette Hohenberger
2019. Structural priming in the production of Turkish possessive noun phrases and noun clauses. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science 3:S1 ► pp. 5 ff. DOI logo
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2018. The basic continuity hypothesis of L1 to L2 production. Second Language Research 34:3 ► pp. 275 ff. DOI logo

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