Dilbilimi

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Browsing Dilbilimi by Author "Aksu-Koç, Ayhan."

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    Acquisition of modality in Turkish
    (Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2013., 2013.) Terziyan, Treysi.; Taylan, Eser Erguvanlı.; Aksu-Koç, Ayhan.
    In this thesis, modality is explored from different perspectives such as semantics, typology and psycholinguistics. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how modality unfolds in the linguistic development of Turkish children and to find what factors affect this development. This aim is accomplished with a longitudinal and an experimental study. In the longitudinal study, two Turkish children's production of modality between ages 1;3-2;0 and 1;6-2;10 is investigated. In the experimental study, children between ages 3 and 5 are tested on their ability to comprehend expressions of modality. Also, in these studies various influences on the acquisition of modality are investigated, such as child directed speech, multifunctionality of forms, morphological and lexical means of modal expressions, pragmatic functions and children's theory of mind abilities. The results of the longitudinal study suggest that the first modal category to be acquired is dynamic modality and then soon after evidential modality. Lastly, epistemic and deontic modalities are acquired around the same time. This is corroborated by the findings ofthe experimental study. Moreover, the influences on the acquisition of modality found on either study were child directed speech, multifunctionality of forms, means of mod ali zed expressions and theory of mind skills.
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    Early verbs and the acquisition of Turkish argument structure
    (Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute of Social Sciences, 1999., 1999.) Ketrez, F. Nihan, 1973-; Taylan, Eser Erguvanlı.; Aksu-Koç, Ayhan.
    This thesis analyzes the acquisition of early verbs and Turkish argument structure by four, monolingual Turkish children whose language development is studied longitudinally between the ages 1; 1,19 and 3;3,3. In the first part of the thesis, the early verbs produced by the subjects are described and the emergence of the Turkish verb as a syntactic category is discussed. The main claim in the study is that the subjects go through a developmental stage during which they provide hardly any evidence for the verb category in their speech. Morphological and syntactic evidence for the category start to appear by the age of 1;6-1;7 and its acquisition is completed by 2;0 years of age. The second part of the thesis concentrates on the development of the Turkish argument structure and discusses the acquisition of verbs with various argument frames within the theoretical framework of Prominence Theory proposed by Grimshaw (1992). Two major issues discussed in this part are the development of the syntax-semanticsmorphology interface and the role of the agent in the acquisition of argument structures. The study provides evidence for a semantically based acquisition of the argument structures underlining the importance of the role of the agent in children's early grammar.