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The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood
Edited by Belma Haznedar and F. Nihan Ketrez
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 20] 2016
► pp. 177–191

Learning to think, talk, and gesture about motion in language-specific ways

Insights from Turkish

| Georgia State University
| Georgia State University, USA

Languages differ systematically in the way they express spatial motion, rendering it as a highly relevant domain to examine effects of language on nonverbal representation of events. In this chapter, we focus on Turkish and English, the two languages that differ strongly in their expression of motion events. Our review of existing work – spanning across adult and child native speakers of the two languages (as well as several others) – suggests early emergence of language-specific patterns in speech, and possibly in gesture. Our review also highlights some key areas of further research that could shed new light on the effect of language on nonverbal representation of motion, particularly at the early ages.

Keywords: motion events, language acquisition, cross-linguistic variation, gesture, language and thought, spatial cognition, Turkish, English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Talking about motion
  • 3.Gesturing about motion
  • 4.Thinking about motion
  • 5.Summary and future directions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 November 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.20.08ozc
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