Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T16:07:21.066Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hearing relative clauses boosts relative clause usage (and referential clarity) in young Turkish language learners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2013

AYŞE SARILAR ,
DANIELLE MATTHEWS  and
AYLIN C. KÜNTAY
AYŞE SARILAR
Affiliation:
Koç University, Istanbul
DANIELLE MATTHEWS
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
AYLIN C. KÜNTAY*
Affiliation:
Koç University, Istanbul
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Aylin C. Küntay, Koç University, Rumeli Feneri Yolu, Sarıyer 34450, Istanbul, Turkey. E-mail: akuntay@ku.edu.tr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

On account of both their functional and their morphosyntactic characteristics, relative clauses are often viewed as indicators of complexity in child language. Morphosyntactic properties of Turkish make use of particularly arduous relative clauses in spontaneous early discourse. A matching sticker selection task was used to determine whether Turkish-learning 3- and 4-year-olds can be trained to use subject relative clauses and uniquely identifying constructions. Upon their selection of the accurate sticker, the children were exposed to relative clause constructions (relative clause condition), sentences with demonstrative pronouns (demonstrative noun phrase condition), or a general approval (positive feedback condition). The number of relative clauses increased from pretest to posttest only in the relative clause condition; the rate of using adequately discriminating forms increased in all the three conditions, albeit with a steeper increase in the relative clause condition. The results are discussed in the framework of both structural and pragmatic priming.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , March 2015 , pp. 175 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ariel, M. (1988). Referring and accessibility. Journal of Linguistics, 24, 65–87.Google Scholar
Arnon, I. (2005). Relative clause acquisition in Hebrew: Toward a processing-oriented account. In Brugos, A., Clark-Cotton, M. R., & Ha, S. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Arnon, I. (2010). Rethinking child difficulty: The effect of NP type on children's processing of relative clauses in Hebrew. Journal of Child Language, 37, 27–57.Google Scholar
Asher, S. R., & Wigfield, A. (1981). Influence of comparison training on children's referential communication. Journal of Educational Psychology, 73, 232–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.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, 529–555.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Birch, S. A. J., & Bloom, P. (2003). Children are cursed: An asymmetric bias in mental state attribution. Psychological Science, 14, 283–286.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bloom, L., Rispoli, M., Gartner, B., & Hafitz, J. (1989). Acquisition of complementation. Journal of Child Language, 16, 101–120.Google Scholar
Bloom, P., & German, T. P. (2000). Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind. Cognition, 77, 25–31.Google Scholar
Bock, J. K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 355–387.Google Scholar
Bock, K., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of structural priming: Transient activation or implicit learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology, 129, 177–192.Google Scholar
Brandt, S. (2011). Learning from social interaction: The form and function of relative clauses in discourse and experimental studies with children. In Kidd, E. (Ed.), The acquisition of relative clauses: Processing, typology, and function (pp. 61–79). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Brandt, S., Kidd, E., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2009). The discourse bases of relativization: An investigation of young German and English-speaking children's comprehension of relative clauses. Cognitive Linguistics, 20, 539–570.Google Scholar
Branigan, H. P., McLean, J. F., & Jones, M. W. (2005). A blue cat or a cat that is blue? Evidence for abstract syntax in young children's noun phrases. In Brugos, A., Clark-Cotton, M. R., & Ha, S. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 109–121). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, J., & Hopper, P. (2001). Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Çağrı, I. M. (2009). Arguing against subject incorporation in subject relative clauses. Lingua, 119, 359–373.Google Scholar
Chang, F., Dell, G. S., & Bock, K. (2006). Becoming syntactic. Psychological Review, 113, 234–272.Google Scholar
Clancy, P. M. (2009). Dialogic priming and the acquisition of argument marking in Korean. In Guo, J., Lieven, E., Budwig, N., Ervin-Tripp, S., Nakamura, K., & Özçalışkan, Ş. (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (pp. 105–117). New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Carlson, T. B. (1981). Context for comprehension. In Long, J. & Baddeley, A. (Eds.), Attention and Performance (Vol. 9, pp. 313–331). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cleland, A. A., & Pickering, M. J. (2003). The use of lexical and syntactic information in language production: Evidence from the priming of noun phrase structure. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 214–230.Google Scholar
Córrea, L. M. (1995). An alternative assessment of children's comprehension of relative clauses. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 24, 183–203.Google Scholar
Dasinger, L., & Toupin, C. (1994). The development of relative clause functions in narratives. In Berman, R. A. & Slobin, D. I. (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study (pp. 457–514). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Diessel, H., & Tomasello, M. (2000). The development of relative clauses in spontaneous child speech. Cognitive Linguistics, 11, 131–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diessel, H., & Tomasello, M. (2005). A new look at the acquisition of relative clauses. Language, 81, 882–906.Google Scholar
Ekmekçi, F. Ö. (2001). Performance of relativization by Turkish children at the imitation and production levels. In Rona, B. (Ed.), Current issues in Turkish linguistics (pp. 33–46). Ankara: Hitit.Google Scholar
Epley, N., Morewedge, C. K., & Keysar, B. (2004). Perspective taking in children and adults: Equivalent egocentrism but differential correction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 760–768.Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, S. M., & Miller, W. (1964). The development of grammar in child language. In Bellugi, U. & Brown, R. (Eds.), The acquisition of language (pp. 9–34). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.Google Scholar
Fragman, C. (1997). On assessing the distinctive properties of child grammar: The case of relative clause production in French. In Hughes, E., Greenhill, A., & Hughes, M. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 21th Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Friedmann, N., & Novogrodsky, R. (2004). The acquisition of relative clause comprehension in Hebrew: A study of SLI and normal development. Journal of Child Language, 31, 661–681.Google Scholar
Gamez, P. B., Shimpi, P. M., Waterfall, H. R., & Huttenlocher, J. (2009). Priming a perspective in Spanish monolingual children: The use of syntactic alternatives. Journal of Child Language, 36, 269–290.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldberg, A. E. (2003). Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 219–224.Google Scholar
Hale, C. M., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2003). The influence of language on theory of mind: A training study. Developmental Science, 6, 346–359.Google Scholar
Hamburger, H., & Crain, S. (1982). Relative acquisition. In Kuczaj, S. (Ed.), Language development: Vol. 1. Syntax and semantics (pp. 245–274). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Hankamer, J., & Knecht, L. (1976). The role of the subject/nonsubject distinction in determining the choice of relative clause participle in Turkish. NELS, 6, 123–135.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., & Westenberg, C. (2000). Word order priming in written and spoken sentence production. Cognition, 75, B27–B39.Google Scholar
Hermon, G., Kornfilt, J., & Öztürk, B. (2010). Asymmetries in the first-language acquisition of subject and non-subject head-final relative clauses in Turkish. Paper presented at the Sixth Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL 6), Nagoya, Japan.Google Scholar
Hisao, F., & Gibson, E. (2003). Processing relative clauses in Chinese. Cognition, 90, 3–27.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434–446.Google Scholar
Keenan, E. O. (1977). Making it last: Repetition in children's discourse. In Ervin-Tripp, S. & Kernan, M. (Eds.), Child discourse (pp. 125–139). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kidd, E. (2003). Relative clause comprehension revisited: Commentary on Eisenberg (2002). Journal of Child Language, 30, 671–679.Google Scholar
Kidd, E. (2011). The acquisition of relative clauses: Processing, typology, and function. In Kidd, E. (Ed.), The acquisition of relative clauses: Processing, typology, and function (pp. 1–12). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kidd, E. (2012a). Implicit statistical learning is directly associated with the acquisition of syntax. Developmental Psychology, 48, 171–184.Google Scholar
Kidd, E. (2012b). Individual differences in syntactic priming in language acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 393–418.Google Scholar
Kidd, E., Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Object relatives made easy: A cross-linguistic comparison of the constraints influencing young children's processing of relative clauses. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22, 860–897.Google Scholar
Kloo, D., & Perner, J. (2003). Training transfer between card sorting and false belief understanding: Helping children apply conflicting descriptions. Child Development, 74, 1823–1839.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, J. (1984). Case marking, agreement and empty categories in Turkish. Doctoral thesis, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Köymen, S. B., & Kyratzis, A. (2009). Format tying and acquisition of syntax in toddlers’ peer interactions. In Berkeley Linguistics Society, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 202–210). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Küntay, A. C., & Özyürek, A. (2006). Learning attentional contrasts in using demonstratives in conversation: What do language-specific strategies in Turkish reveal? Journal of Child Language, 33, 303–320.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar: A basic introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lefebvre-Pinard, M., & Reid, L. (1980). A comparison of three methods of training communication skills: Social conflict, modeling, and conflict-modeling. Child Development, 51, 179–187.Google Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2007). How toddlers and preschoolers learn to uniquely identify referents for others: A training study. Child Development, 78, 1744–1759.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2012). Two- and four-year-olds learn to adapt referring expressions to context: Effects of distracters and feedback on referential communication. TopiCS, 4, 184–210.Google Scholar
Mitchell, P., Robinson, E. J., Isaacs, J. E., & Nye, R. M. (1996). Contamination in reasoning about false belief: An instance of realist bias in adults but not children. Cognition, 59, 1–21.Google Scholar
Moses, L. J. (1993). Young children's understanding of belief constraints on intention. Cognition Development, 8, 1–25.Google Scholar
Nadig, A. S., & Sedivy, J. C. (2002). Evidence of perspective-taking constraints in children's online-reference resolution. Psychological Science, 13, 329–336.Google Scholar
Nilsen, E. S., Graham, A., & Smith, S. (2008). Preschoolers’ sensitivity to referential ambiguity: Evidence for dissociation between implicit understanding and explicit behavior. Developmental Science, 11, 556–562.Google Scholar
O'Neill, D. K. (1996). Two-year-old children's sensitivity to a parent's knowledge state when making requests. Child Development, 67, 659–677.Google Scholar
O'Neill, D. K., & Topolovec, J. C., (2001). Two-year-old children's sensitivity to the referential (in)efficacy of their own pointing gestures. Journal of Child Language, 28, 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ozeki, H., & Shirai, Y. (2010). Semantic bias in the acquisition of Japanese relative clauses. Journal of Child Language, 37, 197–215.Google Scholar
Özge, D., Marinis, T., & Zeyrek, D. (2010). Production of relative clauses in monolingual Turkish children. In Chandlee, J., Franich, K., Iserman, K., & Keil, L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Boston University Conference on Language Development (Suppl.). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Özsoy, A. S. (1998). Locative inversion, VP-adjunction and Turkish relativization. In Johanson, L., Csató, É. Á., Locke, V., Menz, A., & Winterling, D. (Eds.), The Mainz Meeting, Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Turkish Linguistics (pp. 362–375). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Piaget, J. (1930). The child's conception of physical causality. New York: HarcourtGoogle Scholar
Pickering, M. J., & Ferreira, V. S. (2008). Structural priming: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 427–459.Google Scholar
Robinson, E. J., & Robinson, W. P. (1985). Teaching children about verbal referential communication. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 8, 285–299.Google Scholar
Roth, F. (1984). Accelerating language learning in young children. Journal of Child Language, 11, 89–107.Google Scholar
Rowland, C., Chang, F., Ambridge, B., Pine, J., & Lieven, E. (2012). The development of abstract syntax: Evidence from structural priming and the lexical boost. Cognition, 125, 49–63.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
Sarılar, A. (2010). Effects of different feedback conditions on children's referring expressions. Unpublished MA thesis, Koç University, Istanbul.Google Scholar
Sarılar, A., & Küntay, A. C. (2011). Do young learners pick up on relative clause constructions in referential communication? A training study. In Taylan, E. Erguvanlı & Rona, B. (Eds.), Puzzles of language: Essays in honour of Karl Zimmer. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.Google Scholar
Shimpi, P. M., Gámez, P. B., Huttellocher, J., & Vasilyeva, M. (2007). Syntactic priming in 3- and 4-year-old children: Evidence for abstract representations of transitive and dative forms. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1334–1346.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1982). Universal and particular in the acquisition of language. In Gleitman, L. R. & Wanner, E. (Eds.), Language acquisition: State of the art (pp. 128–170). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1986). The acquisition and use of relative clauses in Turkic and Indo-European Languages. In Slobin, D. I. & Zimmer, K. (Eds.), Studies in Turkish linguistics (pp. 273–291). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sodian, B. (1988). Children's attributions of knowledge to the listener in referential communication task. Child Development, 59, 378–385.Google Scholar
Thothathiri, M., & Snedeker, J. (2008). Give and take: Syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Cognition, 108, 5–68.Google Scholar
Underhill, R. (1972). Turkish participles. Linguistic Inquiry, 3, 87–99.Google Scholar
Vasilyeva, M., Huttenlocher, J., & Waterfall, H. (2006). Effects of language intervention on syntactic skill levels in preschoolers. Developmental Psychology, 42, 164–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vasilyeva, M., Waterfall, H., & Gomez, L. (2012). Using priming procedures with children. In Hoff, E. (Ed.), Research methods in child language: A practical guide. Oxford: Wiley–Blackwell.Google Scholar
Whitehurst, G. J., Sonnenschein, S., & Ianfolla, B. J. (1981). Learning to communicate from models: Children confuse length with information. Child Development, 52, 507–513.Google Scholar
Yumrutaş, N. (2009). Acquisition of relative clauses in Turkish. Unpublished MA thesis, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul.Google Scholar