Cover not available
Part of
Morphological Complexity within and across Boundaries: In honour of Aslı Göksel
Edited by Aslı Gürer, Dilek Uygun-Gökmen and Balkız Öztürk
[Studies in Language Companion Series 215] 2020
► pp. 39–60

Word formation through derivation vs. compounding

Perspectives from child language acquisition of Turkish

| İstanbul Bilgi University

Languages differ with respect to their word formation tendencies and children’s first language acquisition patterns reflect the dominant word formation options in their language starting at a very early age. Universal tendencies (e.g., preferences due to transparency and regularity of morphological structures) interact with language specific features to a certain extent. This chapter reviews the findings on Turkish speaking children’s acquisition of derivational morphology versus compounds and shows that Turkish displays properties of both. It further provides a discussion of what can be considered derivational as opposed to inflectional in Turkish, as there seems to be disagreements in the literature which are reflected in the language acquisition analyses, having a potential impact on the interpretation of the results.

Keywords: derivational morphology, inflectional morphology, compounds, child language acquisition, Turkish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Compounds vs. derivations in child language acquisition
  • 3.Compounds vs. derivations in child Turkish
  • 4.Derivation vs. inflection in Turkish
  • 5.Later compounding tendencies
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgment
  • References
Published online: 15 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.215.02ket
References
Aksan, Mustafa
2001 Agents in Turkish and their Morphology [Linguistics Research Series 3]. Mersin: Mersin University Press.Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, Ayhan & Slobin, Dan I.
1985 The acquisition of Turkish. In The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, Vol. 1: The Data, Dan I. Slobin (ed.), 839–878. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Akyol Bal, Özden
2016 Acquisition of Word Formation in Turkish: Compounding and Derivation with Agentive Suffix. PhD dissertation, Çukurova University, Adana.
Akyol Bal, Özden & Sofu, Hatice
2014 Lexical innovations in Turkish. Turkish Studies 9(3): 79–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Stephen
1982 Where’s morphology? Linguistic Inquiry 13: 571–612.Google Scholar
Banguoğlu, Tahsin
1990 Türkçenin Grameri. Ankara: TDK Yay.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie
2009 Typology of compounds. In Oxford Handbook of Compounding, Rochelle Lieber & Pavel Štekauer (eds), 343–356. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Bayraktar Ekten, Nesrin
2017 Türkiye Türkçesinde -ma ekinin yapım eki olarak işlevleri (The derivational function of -ma in Turkey Turkish). Journal of History Culture and Art Research 6(6): 556–563. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berman, Ruth A. & Clark, Eve V.
1989 Learning to use compounds for contrast: Data from Hebrew. First Language 9: 247–270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Booij, Geert
2000 lnflection and derivation. In Morphology. An International Handbook on Inflection and Word-Formation, Vol. 1, Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann & Joachim Mugdan (eds), 360–369. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L.
1985 Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form [Typological Studies in Language 9]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve V.
1993 The Lexicon in Acquisition. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998 Morphology in language acquisition. In The Handbook of Morphology, Andrew Spencer & Arnold M. Zwicky (eds), 379–389. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2019 Acquisition of word formation in Romance languages. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Mark Aronoff (ed.). Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve V. & Berman, Ruth A.
1984 Structure and the use in the acquisition of word-formation. Language 60: 547–590. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve V. & Hecht, Barbara F.
1982 Learning to coin agent and instrument nouns. Cognition 12: 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve V., Hecht, Barbara F. & Mulford, Randa C.
1986 Acquiring complex compounds: Affixes and word order in English. Linguistics 24: 7–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Çotuksöken, Yusuf
1980 Türkçe’de ekler-kökler-gövdeler [Affixes-roots-stems in Turkish]. İstanbul: Alaz Yayınları.Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U.
1989 Prototypical differences between inflection and derivation. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 42: 3–10.Google Scholar
2006 Compound types. In Representation and Processing of Compound Words, Gary Libben & Gonia Jarema (eds), 23–44. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U., Ketrez, F. Nihan & Kilani-Schoch, Marianne
(eds) 2017a Nominal Compound Acquisition [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 61]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017b Discussion and outlook. In Dressler, Ketrez & Kilani-Schoch (eds), 287–305.Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U., Ketrez, F. Nihan, Kilani-Schoch, Marianne, Stephany, Ursula
2017 Introduction. In Dressler, Ketrez & Kilani-Schoch (eds), 1–18.Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U., Korecky-Kröll, Katharina, Sommer-Lolei, Sabine, Libben, Gary, Kilani-Schoch, Marianne, Ketrez, F. Nihan, Argus, Reili, Dabasinskiene, Ineta, Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė, Laura, Ijäs, Johanna, Kazakovskaya, Victoria, Laalo, Klaus, Thomadaki, Evangelia & Stephany, Ursula
2017 Nominal compound acquisition in 10 languages: Psycholinguistic evidence from lexical typology. Paper presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, 10–13 September, University of Zurich. DOI logo
Ekmekçi, Özden
1987 Creativity in the language acquisition process. In Studies on Modern Turkish, Hendrik E. Boeschoten & Ludo T. Verhoeven (eds), 203–210. Tilburg: Tilburg University.Google Scholar
1990 Coinage of words in child’s lexicon in acquiring Turkish. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Turkish Linguistics, Sabri Koç (ed.). Ankara: Middle East Technical University Publications.Google Scholar
Erdem, Mevlüt
2011 Türkçede yapım ve çekim eklerinin özellikleri ve sınırları (On properties and boundaries between inflectional and derivational suffixes in Turkish). Bilig 58: 71–90.Google Scholar
Ergin, Muharrem
1985 Türk dil bilgisi (Turkish grammar). İstanbul: Boğaziçi Yay.Google Scholar
Erguvanlı Taylan, Eser
2015 The phonology and morphology of Turkish. İstanbul: Boğaziçi University Press.Google Scholar
Göksel, Aslı
1988 Bracketing paradoxes in Turkish nominal compounds. In Studies on Turkish Linguistics, Sabri Koç (ed.), 287–298. Ankara: METU Press.Google Scholar
2009 Compounds in Turkish. Lingue e Linguaggio, 2: 213–236.Google Scholar
Göksel, Aslı & Haznedar, Belma
2008 Türkçe tamlamaların yapısı: Bir veri tabanı çalışması (The structure of Turkish compounds: A database study). In XXI. Ulusal dilbilim kurultayı bildirileri (Proceedings of the 21st Conference on Linguistics), Yeşim Aksan & Mustafa Aksan (eds), 362–364. Mersin: Mersin University Publications.Google Scholar
Göksel, Aslı & Kerslake, Celia
2005 Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin & Sims, Andrea D.
2010 Understanding Morphology. London: Hodder Education.Google Scholar
Kabadayı, Abdülkadir
(2012) Okulöncesi çocukların Türkçe ediniminde yaptıkları kurallaştırma hatalarının incelenmesi (An investigation of preschool children’s overregularization errors in the acquisition of Turkish). Turkish Studies 7(3): 1561–1573.Google Scholar
Kempe, Vera, Brooks, Partricia, J. & Gillis, Steven
2007 Diminutives provide multiple benefits for language acquisition. In Savickienė & Dressler (eds), 319–342.Google Scholar
Ketrez, F. Nihan
1999 Early Verbs and the Acquisition of Turkish Argument Structure. MA thesis. Boğaziçi University, İstanbul.
2017 The emergence of nominal compounds in Turkish: A case study on structural symplicity vs. input frequency. In Dressler, Ketrez & Kilani-Schoch (eds), 231–249. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ketrez, F. Nihan & Aksu-Koç, Ayhan
2007 The (scarcity of) diminutives in Turkish child language. In Savickienė & Dressler (eds), 279–293.Google Scholar
In press. Noun and verb derivations in early Turkish child and child-directed speech. In Acquisition of Derivational Morphology, Veronika Mattes, Sabine Sommer-Lolei, Katharina Korecky-Kröll & Wolfgang U. Dressler (eds) Amsterdam John Benjamins
Kilani-Schoch, Marianne
2017 Early development of compounds in two French children’s corpora. In Dressler, Ketrez & Kilani-Schoch (eds), 91–118.Google Scholar
Kjӕrbӕk, Laila & Basbø, Hans
2017 Compound nouns in Danish child language. In Dressler, Ketrez & Kilani-Schoch (eds), 39–62.Google Scholar
Korkmaz, Zeynep
2009 Türkiye Türkçesi grameri (Şekil bilgisi) (Grammar of Turkey Turkish (the form)). Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin
1997 Turkish. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Korecky-Kröll, Katharina, Sommer-Lolei, Sabine & Dressler, Wolfgang U.
2017 Emergence and early development of German compounds. In Dressler, Ketrez & Kilani-Schoch (eds), 19–37.Google Scholar
Lieber, Rochelle
2017 Derivational morphology. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Mark Aronoff (ed.). Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lieber, Rochelle & Štekauer, Pavol
2011 Oxford Handbook of Compounding. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian
1976 Hungarian research on the acquisition of morphology and syntax. Journal of Child Language 3. 397–410. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plank, Frans
1994 Inflection and derivation. In The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Robert E. Asher (ed.), 1671–1678. Oxford: Pergamon press.Google Scholar
Savickienè, Ineta
2007 Form and meaning of diminutives in Lithuanian child language. In Savickienė & Dressler (eds), 13–41.Google Scholar
Savickienè, Ineta & Dressler, Wolfgang U.
(eds) 2007 The Acquisition of Diminutives: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 43]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sofu, Hatice
1995 Acquisition of Lexicon in Turkish. PhD dissertation, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey.
2016 Adların ve eylemlerin edinimi (Acquisition of nouns and verbs). Çukurova Üniversitesi Türkoloji Araştırmaları Dergisi (1). 90–97.Google Scholar
Stephany, Ursula
1982 Inflectional and lexical morphology: A linguistic continuum. Glossologia 1: 27–55.Google Scholar
Štekauer, Pavol & Lieber, Rochelle
2005 Handbook of Word Formation. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Uzun, N. Engin, Uzun, Leyla S., Aksan, Yeşim K. & Aksan, Mustafa
1992 Türkiye Türkçesinin türetim ekleri: Bir döküm denemesi (Derivation suffixes in Turkey Turkish: A documentation attempt). Ankara: Şirin.Google Scholar
van der Heijden, Hanneke
2011 Word formation processes in young bilingual children. In Bilingualism and Migration, Guus Extra & Ludo T. Verhoeven (eds), 123–142. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Verhoeven, Ludo T.
1988 The bilingual child as a word maker: Word formation processes in Turkish and Dutch. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, Shelley Axmayer, Annie Jaisser & Helen Singmaster (eds), 232–343. Berkeley CA: BLS.Google Scholar
Wilkens, Jens
2016 Turkish. Word-Formation: An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe, Vol. 5, Peter O. Müller, Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Susan Olsen, Franz Rainer (eds), 3367–3385. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zülfikar, Hamza
1991 Terim sorunları ve terim yapma yolları [Terminology problems and ways of terminology derivation). Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Dil ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu.Google Scholar