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. 153–175

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

Children’s referential choices in Turkish

Experimentally elicited and conversationally occasioned determinants

 | Koç University, Turkey
 | University of Chicago, Illinois
 | Koç University, Turkey | Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Published online: 18 November 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.20.07ate
Abstract
We present research on the emergence and development of verbal and non-verbal referential skills of Turkish L1 learners. Turkish has interesting distinctive features compared to other frequently studied languages. The first section presents an overview of research about typically developing L1 learners’ comprehension and production skills in various preverbal and verbal referential situations. The second section presents contrastively interesting properties of Turkish setting the ground for crosslinguistic comparisons. The third section reviews experimental research on Turkish L1 learners’ referential communication skills. The fourth section reviews naturalistic studies about verbal and nonverbal devices employed by Turkish L1 learners during referential interactions with primary caregivers. Finally, we provide critical evaluation and future directions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Overview of development of referential skills
  • 3.Why studying referential communication in Turkish is important
    • 3.1Word order
    • 3.2Variation and referential sets
    • 3.3Pro-drop argument realization system
    • 3.4Optional determiner system
    • 3.5Three-way demonstrative pronoun system
    • 3.6Relative clause structures
  • 4.Experimental studies on Turkish-learning children’s referential communication skills
  • 5.Naturalistic studies examining Turkish-learning children’s referential communication skills
  • 6.Concluding remarks and future directions
  • References
References (75)
References
Aksu-Koç, A.A. & Slobin, D.I. 1985. Acquisition of Turkish. In The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, D.I. Slobin (ed.), 839–878. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Allen, S.E.M. 2000. A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut. Linguistics 38: 483–521. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ateş-Şen, A.B. 2010. The Effects of Discourse-Pragmatic Principles on Young Turkish Toddlers’ and Their Regular Caregivers’ Referential Expressions. MA dissertation, Koç University, Istanbul.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ateş-Şen, A.B., Demir-Lira, Ö.E. & Küntay, A. 2011, April. Effects of discourse-pragmatic factors on verbal and gestural reference of Turkish toddlers and primary caregivers. Poster presented at the Biennial Meeting of Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), Montreal.
Ateş-Şen, A.B. & Küntay, A. 2014, July. How do Turkish learners and their caregivers integrate discourse-pragmatic knowledge and gestures in their referential expressions? Poster presented at the 19th Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), Berlin.
Aureli, T., Perucchini, P. & Genco, M. 2009. Children’s understanding of communicative intentions in the middle of the second year of life. Cognitive Development 24: 1–12. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bahtiyar, S. & Küntay, A.C. 2009. Integration of communicative partner’s visual perspective in patterns of referential requests. Journal of Child Language 36: 529–554. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bamberg, M.G.W. 1986. A functional approach to the acquisition of anaphoric relationships. Linguistics 24: 227–284. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1987. The Acquisition of Narratives: Learning to Use Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bastuji, J. 1976. Les relations spatiales en Turc contemporain: Etude semantique. Paris: Editions Klincksieck.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bates, E., Camaioni, L. & Volterra, V. 1975. Performatives prior to speech. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 21: 205–226.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Behne, T., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. 2005. One-year-olds comprehend the communicative intentions behind gestures in a hiding game. Developmental Science 8: 492–499. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bishop, D.V.M. & Adams, C. 1991. What do referential communication tasks measure? A study of children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics 12: 199–215. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brooks, R. & Meltzoff, A.N. 2002. The importance of eyes: How infants interpret adult looking behavior. Developmental Psychology 38: 958–966. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Butler, S.C., Caron, A.J. & Brooks, R. 2000. Infant understanding of the referential nature of looking. Journal of Cognition and Development 1: 359–377. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Camaioni, L., Perucchini, P., Bellagamba, F. & Colonnesi, C. 2004. The role of declarative pointing in developing a theory of mind. Infancy 5: 291–308. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Campbell, A.L., Brooks, P., & Tomasello, M. 2000. Factors affecting young children’s use of pronouns as referring expressions. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 43: 1337–1349. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carpenter, M., Nagell, K. & Tomasello, M. 1998. Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 63(4): Serial No. 255. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chafe, W.L. 1976. Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness,subjects, topics and point of view. In Subject and Topic, C.N. Li (ed.), 27–55. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clancy, P.M. 1992. Referential strategies in the narratives of Japanese children. Discourse Processes 15: 441–467. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1993). Preferred argument structure in Korean acquisition. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual Child Language Research Forum, E.V. Clark (ed), 307–314. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, H.H. & Schaefer, E.F. 1987. Concealing one’s meaning from overhearers. Journal of Memory and Language 26: 209–225. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, H.H., Schreuder, R., & Buttrick, S. 1983. Common ground and the understanding of demonstrative reference. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 22: 1–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, H.H. & Wilkes-Gibbs, D. 1986. Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition 22: 1–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corkum, V. & Moore, C. 1995. Development of joint visual attention in infants. In Joint Attention: Its Origins and Role in Development, C. Moore & P.J. Dunham (eds), 61–83. Hillsdale NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dede, M. 1986. Definiteness and referentiality in Turkish nonverbal sentences. In Studies in Turkish Linguistics [Typological Studies in Language 8], D.I. Slobin & K. Zimmer (eds), 147–163. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Demir, Ö.E., So, W.C., Özyürek, A. & Goldin-Meadow, S. 2012. Turkish- and English-speaking children display sensitivity to perceptual context in the referring expressions they produce in speech and gesture. Language and Cognitive Processes 27: 844–867. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Diessel, H. & Tomasello, M. 2000. The development of relative clauses in spontaneous child speech. Cognitive Linguistics 11: 131–151.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Du Bois, J.W. 1987. The discourse basis of ergativity. Language 63: 805–855. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enç, M. 1986. Topic switching and pronominal subjects in Turkish. In Studies in Turkish Linguistics [Typological Studies in Language 8], D.I. Slobin & K. Zimmer (eds.), 195–208. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Erguvanlı, E.E. 1984. The Function of Word Order in Turkish Grammar. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Erguvanlı-Taylan, E. & Zimmer, K. 1994. Case marking in Turkish indefinite object constructions. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 20: 547–552. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gadzieva, N.Z. 1979. Tjurkojazycnye Arealy Kavkaza. Moskow: Nauka.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Graf, E. & Davies, C. 2014. The production and comprehension of referring expressions. In Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition [Trends in Language Acquisition Research 10], D. Matthews (ed.), 161–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guerriero, A.M.S., Oshima-Takane, Y. & Kuriyama, Y. 2006. The development of referential choice in English and Japanese: A discourse-pragmatic perspective. Journal of Child Language 33: 823–857. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gürcanlı, Ö., Nakipoğlu, M. & Özyürek, A. 2007. Shared information and argument omission in Turkish. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, H. Caunt-Nulton, S. Kulatilake & I. Woo (eds), 262–273. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickmann, M. 1982. The Development of Narrative Skills: Pragmatic and Metapragmatic Aspects of Discourse Cohesion. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, Chicago.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickmann, M., Liang, J., & Crevel, M. 1989. The given/new distinction in children’s narratives: A cross-linguistic analysis. Paper presented at the 10th Biennial Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, Jyväsklä, Finland.
Huang, C. 2012. Referential choice and informativeness in mother-child conversation: A focus on the mother. Language Sciences 34: 319–338. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kail, M. & Hickmann, M. 1992. French children’s ability to introduce referents in narratives as function of mutual knowledge. First Language 12: 73–94. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. 1981. A Functional Approach to Child Language. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Küntay, A. C. 2002. Development of the expression of indefiniteness: Presenting new referents in Turkish picture-series stories. Discourse Processes 33: 77–101. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Küntay, A.C., Bahtiyar, S.A., Sungur, H., & Özdamar, Ö. 2008. Requestive speech leads to referential clarity in Turkish preschool children. In BUCLD 32: Proceedings of the 32th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, H. Chan, H. Jacob & E. Kapia (eds), 239–250. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Küntay, A., Nakamura, K. & Ateş-Şen, A. B. 2014. Crosslinguistic and crosscultural approaches to pragmatic development. In Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition [Trends in Language Acquisition Research 10], D. Matthews (ed.), 317–341. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Küntay, A. & Özyürek, A. 2002. Joint attention and the development of the use of demonstrative pronouns in Turkish. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, B. Skarabela, S. Fish & A. H. Do (eds), 336–347. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Küntay, A.C. & Özyürek, A. 2006. Learning to use demonstratives in conversation: What do language specific strategies in Turkish reveal? Journal of Child Language 33: 303–320. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Küntay, A.C. & Slobin, D.I. 1996. Listening to a Turkish mother: Some puzzles for acquisition. In Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language: Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp, D.I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis & J. Guo (eds), 265–286. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1999. The acquisition of Turkish as a native language: A research review. Turkish Languages 3: 151–188.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Küntay, A. & Slobin, D.I. 2002. Putting interaction back into child language: Examples from Turkish. Psychology of Language and Communication 6: 5–14.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., Henning, A., Striano, T. & Tomasello, M. 2004. Twelve-month-olds point to share attention and interest. Developmental Science 7: 297–307. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., Striano, T. & Tomasello, M. 2006. Twelve- and 18-month-olds point to provide information for others. Journal of Cognition and Development 7: 173–187. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. 2007. Pointing out new news, old news, and absent referents at 12 months of age. Developmental Science 10: 1–7. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2008. Twelve-month-olds communicate helpfully and appropriately for knowledgeable and ignorant partners. Cognition 108: 732–739. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liszkowski, U. & Tomasello, M. 2011. Individual differences in social, cognitive, and morphological aspects of infant pointing. Cognitive Development 26: 16–29. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics, Vol. 2. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., Theakston, A. & Tomasello, M. 2006. The effect of perceptual availability and prior discourse on young children’s use of referring expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics 27: 403–422. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McGann, W. & Schwartz, A. 1988. Main character in children’s narratives. Linguistics 26: 215–233. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moll, H. & Tomasello, M. 2004. 12- and 18-month-old infants follow gaze to spaces behind barriers. Developmental Science 7: F1–F9. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moore, C. & Corkum, V. 1998. Infant gaze following based on eye direction. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 16: 495–503. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özyürek, A. 1998. An analysis of the basic meaning of Turkish demonstratives in face-to-face conversational interaction. In Oralite et Gestualite: Communication Multimodale Interaction, S. Santi, I. Guaitella, C. Cave & G. Konopczynski (eds), 609–614. Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özyürek, A. & Kita, S. 2000. Attention manipulation in the situational use of Turkish and Japanese demonstratives. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America Conference. Chicago IL.
Paradis, J. & Navarro, S. 2003. Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: What is the role of input? Journal of Child Language 30: 371–393. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rozendaal, M. & Baker, A. 2008. A cross-linguistic investigation of the acquisition of the pragmatics of indefinite and definite reference in two-year-olds. Journal of Child Language 38: 1–35.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2010. The acquisition of reference: Pragmatic aspects and the influences of language input. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 1866–1879. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salomo, D., Graf, E., Lieven, E. & Tomasello, M 2011. The role of perceptual availability and discourse context in young children’s question answering. Journal of Child Language 38: 918–931. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salomo, D., Lieven, E. & Tomasello, M. 2010. Young children’s sensitivity to new and given information when answering predicate-focus questions. Applied Psycholinguistics 31: 101–115. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sarılar, A. & Küntay, A. C. 2011. Do young learners pick up on relative clause constructions in referential communication? A training study. In Puzzles of Language: Essays in Honour of Karl Zimmer, E. Erguvanlı-Taylan & B. Rona (eds) 121–135. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sarılar, A., Matthews, D., & Küntay, A. 2015. Hearing relative clauses boosts relative clause usage (and referential clarity) in young Turkish language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics 36: 175–202. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skarabela, B. & Allen, S. E. M. 2010. How newness and joint attention work together in child Inuktitut: Assessing discourse-pragmatic models of early argument realization. In BUCLD 34: Proceedings of the 34th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, K. Franich, K.M. Iserman & L.K. Lauren (eds), 385–396. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skarabela, B. & Allen, S.E.M. 2011. How newness and joint attention work together in child Inuktitut: Assessing discourse-pragmatic models of early argument realization. In BUCLD 34: Proceedings of the 34th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, K. Franich, K. Iserman & L. Keil (eds), 385–396. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slobin, D.I. 1982. Universal and the particular in the acquisition of language. In Language Acquisition: State of the Art, L.R. Gleitman & E. Wanner (eds), 128–170. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1986. The acquisition and use of relative clauses in Turkic and Indo-European Languages. In Studies in Turkish Linguistics [Typological Studies in Language 8], D.I. Slobin & K. Zimmer (eds), 273–291. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I., Küntay, A. & Hoiting, N. 2001, April. Parental variations on a theme as a guide to language form and use. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). Minneapolis MN.
So, W.C., Demir, O.E. & Goldin-Meadow, S. 2010. When speech is ambiguous gesture steps in: Sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles in early childhood. Applied Psycholinguistics 31: 209–224. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wigglesworth, G. 1990. Children’s narrative acquisition: A study of some aspects of reference and anaphora. First Language 10: 105–125. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue