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Acquisition of canonical and non-canonical word orders in L1 Turkish

  • Çiğdem Sağın-Şimşek
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The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood
This chapter is in the book The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood

Abstract

While some studies on child language acquisition demonstrate that the properties of syntax are acquired before syntax-pragmatics interface and the children experience difficulties in several aspects of pragmatic language use, some others, report early sensitivity to the syntax-pragmatics interface. This study aims to explore whether the syntax-before-pragmatics argument can account for acquisition of Turkish word order by examining the syntactic and pragmatic word order preferences of Turkish children. The data obtained from 12 Turkish monolingual children aged between 2;0–6;0 reveal that at 2;0, Turkish children show sensitivity to the syntax-pragmatics interface and use various word orders in line with their pragmatic intentions and the pragmatic constraints of their language increase with the age.

Abstract

While some studies on child language acquisition demonstrate that the properties of syntax are acquired before syntax-pragmatics interface and the children experience difficulties in several aspects of pragmatic language use, some others, report early sensitivity to the syntax-pragmatics interface. This study aims to explore whether the syntax-before-pragmatics argument can account for acquisition of Turkish word order by examining the syntactic and pragmatic word order preferences of Turkish children. The data obtained from 12 Turkish monolingual children aged between 2;0–6;0 reveal that at 2;0, Turkish children show sensitivity to the syntax-pragmatics interface and use various word orders in line with their pragmatic intentions and the pragmatic constraints of their language increase with the age.

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