Home Linguistics & Semiotics Comparison of micro- and macro- structural narrative features between Turkish-Kurdish bilinguals and Turkish monolinguals
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Comparison of micro- and macro- structural narrative features between Turkish-Kurdish bilinguals and Turkish monolinguals

  • Merve Savaş ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Senanur Kahraman Beğen ORCID logo , İlayda Çelik Başoğlu ORCID logo , Berfin Aktan ORCID logo and Özlem Öge-Daşdöğen ORCID logo
Published/Copyright: September 17, 2024
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Abstract

Bilingualism may lead to differences in narrative micro- and macrostructural features. Creating a normative data set on the narrative characteristics of healthy Turkish-Kurdish bilinguals may allow for a more effective assessment of language disorders that may occur in bilinguals with acquired brain injury. This study aims to determine how narrative micro- and macrostructural features differ in Turkish-Kurdish bilinguals in single picture and story narratives. A total of 23 bilingual (Turkish-Kurdish) and 23 monolingual (Turkish) healthy individuals were included in the study. Narrative samples were obtained using single pictures and a story. Micro- and macrostructural features were compared between bilinguals and monolinguals matched for age, education, and gender. Mean length utterance-morpheme and clausal density variables, considered as indicators of grammatical complexity, were higher in monolinguals in both single picture and story narratives. Morphemic errors were higher for bilinguals. Effort behaviors, which can interrupt verbal efficiency, were higher in bilinguals in single picture narratives. While there was no difference between the groups in verbal fluency (phonemic and categorical), the lexical diversty in storytelling was higher in monolinguals. In terms of macrostructural features, cognitive inferences in the story context and emotional discourse in the single picture context were higher in monolinguals, while enrichment expressions in the single picture narrative were higher in bilinguals. In both groups, macrostructural features such as cognitive inferences and expressions of uncertainty in discourse were negatively correlated with grammatical complexity variables. Turkish-Kurdish bilinguals’ single picture and story narratives in Turkish may show semantic, morphosyntactic and pragmatic differences compared to Turkish-speaking monolinguals.


Correction note

Correction added on October 24, 2024 after online publication on September 17, 2024: A typing error in the surname of the author Özlem Öge-Daşdöğen was corrected.



Corresponding author: Merve Savaş, Faculty of Health Sciences, İstanbul Atlas University, İstanbul, Türkiye, E-mail:

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Received: 2024-05-06
Accepted: 2024-08-14
Published Online: 2024-09-17
Published in Print: 2025-11-25

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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