Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 13:2 (2023) ► pp.190–217

Constraints on subject-verb agreement marking in Turkish-German bilingual speakers

ORCID logo | Universität Potsdam
ORCID logo | Universität Potsdam

Turkish 3rd person plural subjects normally appear with verbs that are unmarked for number. Following earlier findings which indicate that Turkish heritage speakers (HS) accept overt plural marking more readily compared to monolingually raised Turkish speakers, the present study investigates to what extent bilingual speakers are sensitive to grammatical, surface-level and semantic constraints on Turkish plural agreement marking. A scalar acceptability judgement task was carried out with non-bilingual Turkish speakers residing in Turkey and Turkish-German bilinguals residing in Germany. Our experimental design involved manipulating both subject animacy and subject position. Participants’ judgement patterns confirmed Turkish speakers’ general preference for unmarked verb forms, which was modulated both by subject animacy and by subject position. Significant differences were observed between lower proficiency HS on the one hand, and monolinguals and advanced proficiency HS on the other, suggesting that the relatively subtle interplay between different types of constraint on number agreement marking is affected by heritage language conditions. We found no evidence for simplification or optionality reduction in the lower proficiency HS’ judgements, however. We innovate on previous research by using Gradient Symbolic Computation modelling to capture between-group differences in the relative weightings of the constraints under investigation.

Keywords: Turkish, subject-verb agreement, bilingualism, heritage language, Gradient Symbolic Computation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1SVA marking in heritage languages
    • 2.2Subject-verb agreement marking in Turkish
    • 2.3GSC modelling
  • 3.The current study
    • 3.1Acceptability judgements
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Design and materials
      • 3.1.3Procedures
    • 3.2Results
    • 3.3Modelling the results
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.19081.uyg
References
Albrini, A., Benmamoun, E., & Chakrani, B.
(2013) Gender and number agreement in the oral production of Arabic heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16(1), 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D.
(2008) Mixed-effects modelling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59(4), 390–412. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bamyacı, E.
(2016) Competing structures in the bilingual mind: A psycholinguistic investigation of optional verb umber agreement. Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bamyacı, E., Häussler, J., & Kabak, B.
(2014) The interaction of animacy and number agreement: An experimental investigation. Lingua, 1481, 254–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H.
(2013) Random-effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255–278. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S.
(2015) Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M.
(2013a) Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics, 39(3–4), 129–181. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013b) Defining an ideal heritage speaker: Theoretical and methodological challenges. Reply to peer commentaries. Theoretical Linguistics, 39(3–4), 259–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolonyai, A.
(2007) (In)vulnerable agreement in incomplete bilingual L1 learners. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(1), 3–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Groot, C.
(2005) The grammars of Hungarian outside Hungary from a linguistic-typological perspective. In A. Fenyvesi (Ed.), Hungarian language contact outside Hungary (pp. 351–370). John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenyvesi, A.
(2000) The affectedness of the verbal complex in American Hungarian. In A. Fenyvesi & K. Sándor (Eds.), Language contact and the verbal complex of Dutch and Hungarian: Working papers from the 1st Bilingual Language Use Theme of the Study Center on Language Contact (pp. 94–107). JGyTF Press.Google Scholar
Foote, R.
(2011) Integrated knowledge of agreement in early and late English-Spanish bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32(1), 187–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, Z., Polinsky, M., & Scontras, G.
(2015) The differential representation of number and gender in Spanish. The Linguistic Review, 32(4), 703–737. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldrick, M., Putnam, M., & Schwarz, L.
(2016) Coactivation in bilingual grammars: A computational account of code mixing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(5), 857–876. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göknel, Y.
(2013) Turkish grammar: Updated academic edition. Istanbul: Ege Basım.Google Scholar
Göksel, A.
(1987) Distance restrictions on syntactic processes. In H. E. Boeschoten & L. T. Verhoeven (Eds.), Studies on modern Turkish. Proceedings of the third on Turkish Linguistics (pp. 69–81). Tilburg University Press.Google Scholar
Göksel, A., & Kerslake, C.
(2005) Turkish: A comprehensive grammar. Routledge.Google Scholar
Johanson, L.
(1998) The structure of Turkic. In L. Johanson & É. Á. Csató (Eds.), The Turkic languages (pp. 30–66). Routledge.Google Scholar
Johanson, L., & Csató, É. Á.
(1998) The Turkic languages. Routledge.Google Scholar
Kirchner, M.
(2001) Plural agreement in Turkish. Turkic Languages, 51, 216–225.Google Scholar
Korkmaz, Z.
(2009) Türkiye Türkçesi Grameri Şekil Bilgisi. Türk Dil Kurumu.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, J.
(1997) Turkish. Routledge.Google Scholar
Krause, E.
(2020) High sensitivity to conceptual cues in Turkish speakers with dominant German L2: Comparing semantics-morphosyntax and pragmatics-morphosyntax interfaces. In B. Brehmer & J. Treffers-Daller (Eds.), Lost in transmission: The role of attrition and input in heritage language development (pp. 198–228). John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krause, E., & Roberts, L.
(2020) Interlanguage cue competition at semantics-morphosyntax interface: Animacy effects on DOM in L1 Turkish speakers with dominant German L2. In A. Mardale & S. Montrul (Eds.), The acquisition of differential object marking (pp. 313–341). John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuznetsova, A., Bruun Brockhoff, P., & Haubo Bojesen Christensen, R.
(2014) lmerTest: Tests for random and fixed effects for linear mixed effect models (lmer objects of lme4 package). R package version 2.0–11. [URL]
Lago, S., Gracanin-Yuksek, M., Şafak, D. F., Demir, O., Kırkıcı, B., & Felser, C.
(2019) Straight from the horse’s mouth: Agreement attraction effects with Turkish possessors. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 9(3), 398–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Legendre, G., Miyata, Y., & Smolensky, P.
(1990) Harmonic Grammar – A formal multi-level connectionist theory of linguistic well-formedness: Theoretical foundations. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 388–395). Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Matthews, S. J., Cheung, S. C., & Tsang, W. L.
(2014) Anti-transfer effects in third language acquisition. Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Multilingualism. Uppsala University, Sweden.
Montrul, S., Bhatt, R., & Bhatia, A.
(2012) Erosion of case and agreement in Hindi heritage speakers. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 2(2), 141–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pater, J.
(2009) Weighted constraints in generative linguistics. Cognitive Science, 33(6), 999–1035. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polinsky, M.
(1997) Cross-linguistic parallels in language loss. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 14(1–2), 87–123.Google Scholar
(2006) Incomplete acquisition: American Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistic, 14(2), 191–262.Google Scholar
(2018) Heritage languages and their speakers. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polinsky, M., & Scontras, G.
(2020) Understanding heritage languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(1), 4–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poulisse, N.
(1999) Speech errors in first and second language production. John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
R Development Core Team
(2017) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL [URL]
Schroeder, C.
(1999) The Turkish nominal phrase in spoken discourse. Harrassowitz Verlag.Google Scholar
Schütze, C., & Sprouse, J.
(2014) Judgment data. In R. Podesva & D. Sharma (Eds.), Research methods in linguistics (pp. 27–51). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scontras, G., Fuchs, Z., & Polinsky, M.
(2015) Heritage language and linguistic theory. Frontiers in Psychology, 61, Article 1545. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scontras, G., Polinsky, M., & Fuchs, Z.
(2018) In support of representational economy: Agreement in heritage Spanish. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 3(1), 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sezer, E.
(1978) Eylemlerin çoğul öznelere uyumu. Genel Dilbilim Dergisi, 11, 25–32.Google Scholar
Sherkina-Lieber, M.
(2011) Comprehension of Labrador Inuttitut functional morphology by receptive bilinguals. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Sherkina-Lieber, M., Perez-Leroux, A. T., & Johns, A.
(2011) Grammar without speech production: The case of Labrador Inuttitut heritage receptive bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14(3), 301–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smolensky, P., Goldrick, M., & Mathis, D.
(2014) Optimization and quantization in gradient symbol systems: A framework for integrating the continuous and the discrete in cognition. Cognitive Science, 38(6), 1102–1138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylan, E. E.
(2001) The verb in Turkish. John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Veríssimo, J.
(2016) Extending a gradient symbolic approach to the native versus non-native contrast: The case of plurals in compounds. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(5), 900–902. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Uygun, Serkan
2022. Processing pro-drop features in heritage Turkish. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.