Cover not available
Part of
The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking
Edited by Alexandru Mardale and Silvina Montrul
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 26] 2020
► pp. 313–341

Chapter 12
Over-sensitivity to the animacy constraint on DOM in low proficient Turkish heritage speakers

| University of Cologne
| University of York
This study investigated knowledge of a semantics-morphosyntax interface phenomenon in Turkish-German heritage bilingual speakers: optional accusative case marking on indefinite direct objects, an instance of Differential Object Marking (DOM), in Turkish and its interaction with the animacy of the direct object argument. We investigated whether the non-DOM language German, has an influence on the DOM-language Turkish in Turkish heritage bilingual speakers whose dominant language is German. The results of an acceptability judgment task show no cross crosslinguistic influence from the dominant German; the results reveal instead a sensitivity to animacy level of the indefinite direct objects, since heritage speakers make finer animacy distinctions compared to the monolingual Turkish speakers. The study also shows that proficiency level in Turkish contributes to DOM accuracy in the bilingual speakers.
Keywords: optionality, animacy gradience, semantics-morphosyntax interface, heritage language grammar
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The interaction of animacy and DOM in Turkish
      • Transparent context conveying epistemic specificity
      • Opaque context conveying referential specificity
    • 1.2Acquisition of DOM and the relevant phenomenon in Turkish
    • 1.3Bilingualism research investigating the interaction of animacy with DOM
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Experimental stimuli
    • 2.2Monolingual speakers of Turkish
    • 2.3Heritage speakers of Turkish
    • 2.4The acceptability judgement task
    • 2.5Data analysis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Across group comparisons
    • 3.2Within group comparisons for main-animacy levels
    • 3.3Within group comparisons for subanimacy levels
    • 3.4Summary of results
  • 4.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.26.12kra
References
Aissen, J.
(2003) Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 21(3), 435–483. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A., & Slobin, D. I.
(1985) The acquisition of Turkish. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, 2: Theoretical issues (pp. 839–880). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Aydemir, Y.
(2004) Are Turkish preverbal bare nouns syntactic arguments? Linguistic Inquiry, 35(3), 465–474. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H.
(2008) Analyzing linguistic data. A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bamyacı, E., Häussler, J., & Kabak, B.
(2014) The interaction of animacy and number agreement: An experimental investigation. Lingua, 148, 254–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bamyacı, E.
(2016) Competing structures in the bilingual mind: A psycholinguistic investigation of optional verb number agreement. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Bolker, B., & Mächler, M.
(2012) lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes (R package version 0.999999–0).Google Scholar
Bossong, G.
(1985) Empirische Universalienforschung: Differentielle Objektmarkierung in den neuiranischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Chamorro, G., Sturt, P., & Sorace, A.
(2016) Selectivity in L1 attrition: Differential Object Marking in Spanish near-native speakers of English. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 45, 697–715. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clancy, P.
(1992) Referential strategies in the narratives of Japanese children. Discourse Processes, 15, 441–467. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, W.
(1990) Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dasinger, L.
(1995) The development of discourse competence in native Finnish speaking children: A study of the expression of definiteness (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Dede, M.
(1986) Definiteness and referentiality in Turkish verbal sentences. In D. I. Slobin & K. Zimmer (Eds.), Studies in Turkish linguistics (pp. 147–163). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enç, M.
(1991) The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry, 22, 1–25.Google Scholar
Erguvanlı, E.
(1984) The function of word order in Turkish grammar. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Erguvanlı, E., & Zimmer, K.
(1994) Case marking in Turkish indefinite object constructions. In Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 547–552). Berkeley, CA: BLS.Google Scholar
Featherston, S.
(2008) Thermometer judgements as linguistic evidence. In C. Riehl & A. Rothe (Eds,), Was ist linguistische Evidenz? (pp. 69–89). Aachen: Shaker.Google Scholar
Göksel, Asli, & Kerslake, C.
(2005) Turkish: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Guijarro-Fuentes, P., & Marinis, T.
(2007) Acquiring the syntax/semantic interface in L2 Spanish: The personal preposition a . Eurosla Yearbook, 7, 67–87.
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009) The acquisition of personal preposition a by Catalan-Spanish and English-Spanish bilinguals. In J. Collentine, M. García, B. Lafford, & F. Marcos Marín (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 11th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 81–92). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, M.
(2013) Occurrence of nominal plurality. In M. S. Dryer & M. Haspelmath (Eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.Google Scholar
Heusinger, K. von, & Bamyacı, E.
(2017) Specificity effects of Turkish Differential Object Marking. In L. Zidani-Eroğlu, M. Ciscel, & E. Koulidobrova (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL12). Cambridge, MA: MITWPL.Google Scholar
Heusinger, K. von, & Kornfilt, J.
(2005) The case of the direct object in Turkish: Semantics, syntax and morphology. Turkic Languages, 9, 3–44.Google Scholar
Hržica, G., Palmović, M., Kovačević, M., Voeikova, M., Ivanova, K., & Galkina, E.
(2015) Animacy and case in the acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Croatian and Russian. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique, 60(4), 351–368.Google Scholar
Hulk, A. & Müller, N.
(2000) Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3(3), 227–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ketrez, F. N.
(1999) Early verbs and the acquisition of Turkish argument structure (Unpublished MA thesis). Boğaziçi University, İstanbul.
Google Scholar
(2006) A case study on the Accusative case in Turkish. In M. T. Martinez, A. Alcazar, & R. Mayoral (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL 2004) Volume 16 (pp. 163–173). Fresno, CA: California State University, Fresno Publications.Google Scholar
(2015) Incomplete acquisition of the Differential Object Marking in Turkish. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique, 60(4), 421–430.Google Scholar
Ketrez, F. N., & Aksu-Koç, A.
(2009) Early nominal morphology: Emergence of case and number. In U. Stephany & M. D. Voeikova (Eds.), Development of nominal inflection in first language acquisition: A cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 15–48). Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kornfilt, J.
(1997) Turkish. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
(2008) DOM and two types of DSM in Turkish. In H. de Hoop & P. de Swart (Eds.), Differential subject marking (pp. 79–111). Dordrecht: Springer.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 Bernhard Brehmer & Jeanine Treffers-Daller (Eds.), Lost in transmission: The role of attrition and input in heritage language development. Studies in Bilingualism, 59 John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krause, E., Eulitz, C., & Rinker, T.
to appear). Investigating the effects of L1 proficiency and cross-linguistic influences: RT data on morphosyntactic processing of plural NPs in L1. Turkish speakers with dominant German L2. In F. Bayram Ed. Studies in Turkish as a heritage language Amsterdam John Benjamins
Krause, E., & Heusinger K. von
(2019) Gradient effects of animacy on Differential Object Marking in Turkish. In D. Nelson & V.-A. Vihman (Eds.), Effects of animacy in grammar and cognition. Special issue of Open Linguistics, 5(1), 171–190.Google Scholar
Küntay, A.
(2002) Development of the expression of indefiniteness: Presenting new referents in Turkish picture-series stories. Discourse Processes, 33, 77–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S.
(2004) Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morpho-syntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(2), 125–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010) Dominant language transfer in Spanish L2 learners and heritage speakers. Second Language Research, 26(3), 293–925. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011) Interfaces and incomplete acquisition. Lingua, 212(4), 591–604. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., & Bowles, M.
(2009) Back to basics: Differential Object Marking under incomplete acquisition in Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(3), 363–383. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., & Gürel, A.
2015 The acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish by Turkish speakers. In T. Judy & S. Perpiñán (Eds.), The acquisition of Spanish by speakers of less commonly studies languages (pp. 281–308). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Montrul, S., & Sánchez-Walker, N.
(2013) Differential Object Marking in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers. Language Acquisition, 20, 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, N., & Hulk, A.
2001 Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4(1), 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nakamura, K.
(1993) Referential structure in Japanese children’s narratives: The acquisition of wa and ga . In S. Choi (Ed.), Japanese/Korean linguistics (pp. 84–99). Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Oldfield, R. C.
(1971) The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9, 97–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Özge D., Küntay, A., & Snedeker J.
(2019) Why wait for the verb? Turkish speaking children use case markers for incremental language comprehension. Cognition, 183, 152–180. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
R Core Team
2012 R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google Scholar
Sharwood-Smith, M., & Truscott, J.
(2014) The multilingual mind: A modular processing perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I., & Bever, T. G.
(1982) Children use canonical sentence schemas: A crosslinguistic study of word order and inflection. Cognition, 12(3), 229–265.
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F.
(2006) Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22, 339–368.
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A., & Serratrice, L.
(2009) Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13, 195–210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ticio, E., & Avram, L.
(2015) The acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish and Romanian: Semantic scales or semantic features? Revue Roumaine de Linguistique, 60(4), 383–402.Google Scholar
Weskott, T., & Fanselow, G.
(2008) Scaling issues in the measurement of linguistic acceptability. In S. Featherston & S. Winkler (Eds.), The fruits of empirical linguistics 1 (pp. 229–245). Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
(2011) On the informativity of different measures of linguistic acceptability. Language, 87, 249–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Westfall, P. H., Randall D. T., & Wolfinger, R. D.
(2011) Multiple comparisons and multiple tests using SAS. Cary, NC: SAS Institute.Google Scholar
Yamamoto, M.
(1999) Animacy and reference: A cognitive approach to corpus linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Coskun Kunduz, Aylin & Silvina Montrul
2022. Sources of variability in the acquisition of Differential Object Marking by Turkish heritage language children in the United States. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 25:4 ► pp. 603 ff. DOI logo
Requena, Pablo E.
2022. Variation versus deviation. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism DOI logo
Uygun, Serkan & Claudia Felser
2023. Constraints on subject-verb agreement marking in Turkish-German bilingual speakers. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 13:2 ► pp. 190 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 november 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.