Cover not available

In:The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood
Edited by Belma Haznedar and F. Nihan Ketrez
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 20] 2016
► pp. 119–150

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Acquisition of scope relations by Turkish-English bilingual children

 | Boğaziçi University, Turkey
 | Macquarie University, Australia
 | Macquarie University, Australia
Published online: 18 November 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.20.06gec
Abstract
This is a bidirectional case study in the acquisition of semantics by Turkish – English bilingual children. The research question is whether bilingual children acquiring Turkish and English use parental input versus a principle of language learnability, as the basis for their initial interpretation of sentences with a temporal connective (English before, Turkish önce) and disjunction (Turkish ya da, English or). According to the learnability principle, bilingual children were expected to initially assign the same interpretation to the target sentences in both languages, despite differences in the input from adult speakers. The findings of the study confirmed this prediction, and are taken as evidence in support of the principle of language learnability, called the Semantic Subset Principle.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The disjunction parameter
    • 2.1Disjunction in logic and in language
    • 2.2The implicature of exclusivity
    • 2.3Downward entailment
    • 2.4Scope ambiguities
    • 2.5The disjunction parameter
  • 3.Temporal operators
  • 4.The interpretation of logical expressions in child language
    • 4.1Monolingual child language
    • 4.2Bilingual child language
  • 5.Experiment
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Procedures
    • 5.3Materials
    • 5.4Research questions and predictions
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Pre-test with temporal operators: Before/önce
    • 6.2Pre-test with disjunction words: Or/ya da
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.General discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (45)
References
Ambridge, B. & Lieven, E.V.M. 2011. Child Language Acquisition: Contrasting Theoretical Approaches. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amidon, A. & Carey, P. 1972. Why five-year-olds cannot understand before and after . Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11: 417–423. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barrie-Blackley, S. 1973. Six-year-old children’s understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2: 153–165. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berwick, R. 1985. Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, E.V. 1971. On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after . Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 10: 266–275. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crain, S. 1982. Temporal terms: Mastery by age five. In Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Stanford Child Language Research Forum 21: 33–38. Stanford University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2008. The interpretation of disjunction in Universal Grammar. Language and Speech 5: 151–169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2012. Emergence of Meaning. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crain, S. Gardner, A., Gualmini, A. & Rabbin, B. 2002. Children’s command of negation. In Proceedings of the 3rd Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics, Y. Otsu (eds), 71–95. Tokyo: Hituzi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crain, S., Goro, T. & Thornton, R. 2006. Language acquisition is language change. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 35: 31–49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crain, S., Goro, T., Notley, A. & Zhou, P. 2013. A parametric account of scope in child language. In Advances in Language Acquisition, S. Stavrakaki, M. Lalioti & P. Konstantinopoulou (eds), 63–71. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crain, S., Gualmini, A. & Pietroski, P. 2005. Brass tracks in linguistic theory: innate grammatical principles. In The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, P. Carruthers, S. Laurence & S. Stitch (eds.), 175–197. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crain, S. & Khlentzos, D. 2008. Is logic innate? Biolinguistics 2(1): 24–56.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crain, S., Ni, W. & Conway, L. 1994. Learning, parsing and modularity. In Perspectives on Sentence Processing, C. Clifton Jr., L. Frazier & K. Rayner (eds.), 443–467. Hilldale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crain, S. & Thornton, R. 1998. Investigations in Universal Grammar: A Guide to Experiments on the Acquisition of Syntax and Semantics. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Epstein, S., Flynn, S. & Martohardjono, G. 1996. Second language acquisition: Theoretical and experimental issues in contemporary research. Brain and Behavioral Sciences 19: 677–758. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferreiro, E. & Sinclair, H. 1971. Temporal relations in language. International Journal of Psychology 6: 39–47. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, A.E. 2003. Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Science 7(5): 219–224. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goro, T. 2004. The Emergence of Universal Grammar in the Emergence of Language: The Acquisition of Japanese Logical Connectives and Positive Polarity. MA dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. Language-specific Constraints on Scope Interpretation in First Language Acquisition. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goro, T. & Akiba, S. 2004a. The acquisition of disjunction and positive polarity in Japanese. In WCCFL 23 Proceedings of the 23rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, V. Chand, A. Kelleher, A. J. Rodriguez & B. Schmeiser (eds), 251–264. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2004b. Japanese disjunction and the acquisition of positive polarity. In Proceedings of the Fifth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics, Y. Otsu (ed.), 137–162. Tokyo: Hituzi Shobo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gorrell, P., Crain, S. & Fodor, J. 1989. Contextual information and temporal terms. Journal of Child Language 16: 623–632. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Göksel, A. & Kerslake, C. 2005. Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, H.P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts, P. Cole & J. Morgan (eds.), 41–58. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grüter, T., Lieberman, M. & Gualmini, A. 2010. Acquiring the scope of disjunction and negation in L2: A bidirectional study of learners of Japanese and English. Language Acquisition 17(3): 127–154. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gualmini, A. & Crain, S. 2002. Why no child or adult must learn De Morgan’s laws. In BUCLD 26: Proceedings of the 26th Boston University Conference on Language Development, B. Skarabela, S. Fish & A. H-J. Do (eds), 243–254. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guasti, M. T., Chierchia, G., Crain, S., Foppolo, F., Gualmini, A. & Meroni, L. 2005. Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures. Language and Cognitive Processes 20(5): 667–696. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hatch, E. 1971. The young child’s comprehension of time connectives. Child Development 42: 211–213. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haznedar, B. & Schwartz, B. D. 1997. Are there optional infinitives in child L2 acquisition? In BUCLD 21: Proceedings of the 21st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Acquisition, E. Hughes, M. Hughes & A. Greenhill (eds), 231–239. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, O.S. 2010. Acquisition of Korean disjunction under negation. University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 41(7): 1–12.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lieven, E.V.M. & Tomasello, M. 2008. Children’s first language acquisition from a usage-based perspective. In Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition, P. Robinson & N. Ellis (eds), 168–196. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morris, B. 2008. Logically speaking: Evidence for item-based acquisition of the connectives AND and OR. Journal of Cognition and Development 9(1): 67–88. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Notley, A., Zhou, P., Jensen, B. & Crain, S. 2012. Children’s interpretation of disjunction in the scope of ‘before’: A comparison of English and Mandarin. Journal of Child Language 39(3): 482–522. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Notley, A., Thornton, R. & Crain, S. 2013. English-speaking children’s interpretation of disjunction in the scope of ‘not every’. Biolinguistics 6(1): 32–69.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noveck, I.A. 2001. When children are more logical than adults: Investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition 78(2): 165–188. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinker, S. 1984. Language Learnability and Language Development. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwartz, B.D. & Sprouse, R. 1994. Word order and nominative case in non-native language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 8], T. Hoekstra & B.D. Schwartz (eds), 317–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Su, Y. & Crain, S. 2013. Children’s knowledge of disjunction and universal quantification in Mandarin Chinese. Language and Linguistics 14(3): 599–631.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, A. 2002. Hungarian disjunctions and positive polarity. In Approaches to Hungarian 8, I. Kenesei & P. Siptar (eds), 217–241. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thornton, R. & Crain, S. 2013. Parameters: The pluses and the minuses. In The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax, M. den Dikken (ed), 927–970. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. 2000. First steps toward a usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cognitive Linguistics 11(1): 61–82.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2003. Constructing a Language: A Usage-based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue