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In:The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood
Edited by Belma Haznedar and F. Nihan Ketrez
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 20] 2016
► pp. 341–359

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Verbal functional categories in the speech of a Turkish speaking child with autism

 | University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA
Published online: 18 November 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.20.15gun
Abstract
Language impairment is considered to be one of the most definitive features of autism. Yet, similar to other capabilities of this population, the language use shows great variability. In an attempt to have a better understanding of how this linguistic impairment is manifested in the Turkish-speaking population, the present case study investigates particular syntactic abilities of a seven-year-old Turkish-speaking child with autism. Spontaneous speech samples of the participant were collected at a single session and analyzed to see whether there were any diversions from the normal language acquisition patterns. The results suggest that the participant differs from his normally developing peers with respect to his syntactic development, in particular his production of verbal functional categories.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Autism spectrum disorders
    • 2.1Language in Autism
  • 3.Functional categories of Turkish verbs
    • 3.1Verbal functional categories in Turkish
  • 4.Typical acquisition of functional categories in Turkish
  • 5.Methodology
    • 5.1The participant
    • 5.2The data
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Limitations and caveats
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (50)
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