Cover not available
Part of
The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood
Edited by Belma Haznedar and F. Nihan Ketrez
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 20] 2016
► pp. 119–150

Acquisition of scope relations by Turkish-English bilingual children

| Boğaziçi University, Turkey
| Macquarie University, Australia
| Macquarie University, Australia

This is a bidirectional case study in the acquisition of semantics by Turkish – English bilingual children. The research question is whether bilingual children acquiring Turkish and English use parental input versus a principle of language learnability, as the basis for their initial interpretation of sentences with a temporal connective (English before, Turkish önce) and disjunction (Turkish ya da, English or). According to the learnability principle, bilingual children were expected to initially assign the same interpretation to the target sentences in both languages, despite differences in the input from adult speakers. The findings of the study confirmed this prediction, and are taken as evidence in support of the principle of language learnability, called the Semantic Subset Principle.

Keywords: bilingualism, Turkish, temporal connectives, disjunction, language learnability
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The disjunction parameter
    • 2.1Disjunction in logic and in language
    • 2.2The implicature of exclusivity
    • 2.3Downward entailment
    • 2.4Scope ambiguities
    • 2.5The disjunction parameter
  • 3.Temporal operators
  • 4.The interpretation of logical expressions in child language
    • 4.1Monolingual child language
    • 4.2Bilingual child language
  • 5.Experiment
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Procedures
    • 5.3Materials
    • 5.4Research questions and predictions
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Pre-test with temporal operators: Before/önce
    • 6.2Pre-test with disjunction words: Or/ya da
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.General discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 18 November 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.20.06gec
References
Ambridge, B. & Lieven, E.V.M.
2011 Child Language Acquisition: Contrasting Theoretical Approaches. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Amidon, A. & Carey, P.
1972 Why five-year-olds cannot understand before and after . Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11: 417–423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barrie-Blackley, S.
1973 Six-year-old children’s understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2: 153–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berwick, R.
1985 Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N.
1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
1995 The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E.V.
1971 On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after . Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 10: 266–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crain, S.
1982 Temporal terms: Mastery by age five. In Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Stanford Child Language Research Forum 21: 33–38. Stanford University.Google Scholar
2008 The interpretation of disjunction in Universal Grammar. Language and Speech 5: 151–169. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Emergence of Meaning. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crain, S. Gardner, A., Gualmini, A. & Rabbin, B.
2002 Children’s command of negation. In Proceedings of the 3rd Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics, Y. Otsu (eds), 71–95. Tokyo: Hituzi.Google Scholar
Crain, S., Goro, T. & Thornton, R.
2006 Language acquisition is language change. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 35: 31–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crain, S., Goro, T., Notley, A. & Zhou, P.
2013 A parametric account of scope in child language. In Advances in Language Acquisition, S. Stavrakaki, M. Lalioti & P. Konstantinopoulou (eds), 63–71. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Crain, S., Gualmini, A. & Pietroski, P.
2005 Brass tracks in linguistic theory: innate grammatical principles. In The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, P. Carruthers, S. Laurence & S. Stitch (eds.), 175–197. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crain, S. & Khlentzos, D.
2008 Is logic innate? Biolinguistics 2(1): 24–56.Google Scholar
Crain, S., Ni, W. & Conway, L.
1994 Learning, parsing and modularity. In Perspectives on Sentence Processing, C. Clifton Jr., L. Frazier & K. Rayner (eds.), 443–467. Hilldale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Crain, S. & Thornton, R.
1998 Investigations in Universal Grammar: A Guide to Experiments on the Acquisition of Syntax and Semantics. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, S., Flynn, S. & Martohardjono, G.
1996 Second language acquisition: Theoretical and experimental issues in contemporary research. Brain and Behavioral Sciences 19: 677–758. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferreiro, E. & Sinclair, H.
1971 Temporal relations in language. International Journal of Psychology 6: 39–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A.E.
2003 Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Science 7(5): 219–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goro, T.
2004 The Emergence of Universal Grammar in the Emergence of Language: The Acquisition of Japanese Logical Connectives and Positive Polarity. MA dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
2007 Language-specific Constraints on Scope Interpretation in First Language Acquisition. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Goro, T. & Akiba, S.
2004a The acquisition of disjunction and positive polarity in Japanese. In WCCFL 23 Proceedings of the 23rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, V. Chand, A. Kelleher, A. J. Rodriguez & B. Schmeiser (eds), 251–264. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
2004b Japanese disjunction and the acquisition of positive polarity. In Proceedings of the Fifth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics, Y. Otsu (ed.), 137–162. Tokyo: Hituzi Shobo.Google Scholar
Gorrell, P., Crain, S. & Fodor, J.
1989 Contextual information and temporal terms. Journal of Child Language 16: 623–632. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göksel, A. & Kerslake, C.
2005 Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, H.P.
1975 Logic and conversation. In Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts, P. Cole & J. Morgan (eds.), 41–58. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Grüter, T., Lieberman, M. & Gualmini, A.
2010 Acquiring the scope of disjunction and negation in L2: A bidirectional study of learners of Japanese and English. Language Acquisition 17(3): 127–154. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gualmini, A. & Crain, S.
2002 Why no child or adult must learn De Morgan’s laws. In BUCLD 26: Proceedings of the 26th Boston University Conference on Language Development, B. Skarabela, S. Fish & A. H-J. Do (eds), 243–254. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Guasti, M. T., Chierchia, G., Crain, S., Foppolo, F., Gualmini, A. & Meroni, L.
2005 Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures. Language and Cognitive Processes 20(5): 667–696. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hatch, E.
1971 The young child’s comprehension of time connectives. Child Development 42: 211–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haznedar, B. & Schwartz, B. D.
1997 Are there optional infinitives in child L2 acquisition? In BUCLD 21: Proceedings of the 21st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Acquisition, E. Hughes, M. Hughes & A. Greenhill (eds), 231–239. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Lee, O.S.
2010 Acquisition of Korean disjunction under negation. University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 41(7): 1–12.Google Scholar
Lieven, E.V.M. & Tomasello, M.
2008 Children’s first language acquisition from a usage-based perspective. In Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition, P. Robinson & N. Ellis (eds), 168–196. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Morris, B.
2008 Logically speaking: Evidence for item-based acquisition of the connectives AND and OR. Journal of Cognition and Development 9(1): 67–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Notley, A., Zhou, P., Jensen, B. & Crain, S.
2012 Children’s interpretation of disjunction in the scope of ‘before’: A comparison of English and Mandarin. Journal of Child Language 39(3): 482–522. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Notley, A., Thornton, R. & Crain, S.
2013 English-speaking children’s interpretation of disjunction in the scope of ‘not every’. Biolinguistics 6(1): 32–69.Google Scholar
Noveck, I.A.
2001 When children are more logical than adults: Investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition 78(2): 165–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinker, S.
1984 Language Learnability and Language Development. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, B.D. & Sprouse, R.
1994 Word order and nominative case in non-native language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 8], T. Hoekstra & B.D. Schwartz (eds), 317–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Su, Y. & Crain, S.
2013 Children’s knowledge of disjunction and universal quantification in Mandarin Chinese. Language and Linguistics 14(3): 599–631.Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, A.
2002 Hungarian disjunctions and positive polarity. In Approaches to Hungarian 8, I. Kenesei & P. Siptar (eds), 217–241. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.Google Scholar
Thornton, R. & Crain, S.
2013 Parameters: The pluses and the minuses. In The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax, M. den Dikken (ed), 927–970. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M.
2000 First steps toward a usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cognitive Linguistics 11(1): 61–82.Google Scholar
2003 Constructing a Language: A Usage-based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar