Second Language Acquisition of Turkish

This book brings together the findings of current studies on the second language (L2) acquisition of Turkish, an Altaic language with more than 140 million native speakers around the world. There is now a growing interest in learning and teaching Turkish as an L2, both in and outside Turkey. Coordinated efforts to produce theoretical and empirical work on the acquisition and teaching of L2 Turkish are therefore an urgent need. The compilation in this volume offers eleven L2 studies that explore the representation and/or processing of various linguistic properties in different domains of grammar (phonology, morpho-syntax, pragmatics) and their interfaces. All studies involve adult L2 Turkish learners with various first-language backgrounds at different proficiency levels. With extensive discussions on theoretical and pedagogical issues, this title will appeal to an international readership that includes L2 Turkish researchers, materials designers, and teachers.

Tania Ionin, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign:
This volume brings together the findings of several recent studies on the acquisition of Turkish by adult L2 learners. This is a timely and much-needed volume, given that Turkish is a relatively under-studied language in the realm of L2 acquisition, and given that it contains many interesting linguistic features that enable researchers to test the predictions of different theoretical models. The volume provides comprehensive coverage of L2 Turkish across multiple linguistic domains, including phonology, morphosyntax, semantics, discourse, and processing involving speakers of several different languages, including English, Greek, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Russian and Norwegian, thus allowing for an extensive investigation of cross-linguistic influence. The papers in this volume are a valuable addition to the body of literature investigating L2 acquisition from formal and experimental perspectives.