A study on possessive noun phrases and noun clauses: Structural priming in L2 Turkish

Mercan, Gözde

doi:10.1075/lald.59.12mer

Part of

Second Language Acquisition of Turkish
Edited by Ayşe Gürel
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 59] 2016
► pp. 313–332

Structural priming in L2 Turkish

A study on possessive noun phrases and noun clauses

Gözde Mercan | University of Oslo, Center for Multilingualism in Society Across the Lifespan (MultiLing)

Structural priming is the facilitation in the processing of a linguistic form due to repetition (Bock 1986). This study investigates structural priming in second language (L2) acquisition of Turkish in relation to the representation of L2 grammar. The linguistic structures investigated are possessive noun phrases (NPs) and noun clauses with nominalized verbs, which share the same external genitive-possessive morpho-syntax in Turkish. Adult L2 learners first read prime sentences, and then completed target fragments. Overall, they produced more possessive NPs than noun clauses. Crucially, they produced more possessive NPs after reading NP primes, and more noun clauses following noun clause primes. This suggests that L2 learners have two distinct mental representations for these structures, rather than a single, unspecified one.

Keywords: L2 Turkish, noun clauses, possessive noun phrases, structural priming

Published online: 25 May 2016

https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.59.12mer

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