Araştırma Makalesi
BibTex RIS Kaynak Göster

The Acquisition of Prosodic Focus and Clefts

Yıl 2025, Cilt: 36 Sayı: 2, 225 - 262, 30.12.2025

Gülfem Moorcroft , Mine Nakipoğlu

https://doi.org/10.18492/dad.1499805

Öz

This research examined Turkish-speaking children’s comprehension of prosodic focus and clefts. The first experiment investigated preschoolers’ comprehension of prosodic focus regarding subject and object-focused sentences. Results indicated that children comprehend object-focused sentences more effectively than subject-focused ones until the age of five. Our second experiment explored the effects of pragmatic felicity, age, and cleft type on the cleft comprehension abilities of children. The findings demonstrated that Turkish-speaking children comprehend both cleft types successfully regardless of these factors. Thus, children’s understanding of prosodic focus develops gradually, and the object focus is perceived as the default in the early years of development. However, Turkish-speaking children achieve a high level of competence in interpreting both types of clefts. Our findings suggest that the syntactic structure of Turkish plays a significant role in shaping children’s comprehension abilities.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Acquisition of Turkish cleft sentences presupposition focus prosody

Kaynakça

  • Aravind, A., Freedman, E., Hackl, M., ve Wexler, K. (2016). Subject-object Asymmetries in the Acquisition of Clefts. In Proceedings of the 40th Boston University Conference on Language Development, 1-17. Aravind, A., Hackl, M., ve Wexler, K. (2018). Syntactic and pragmatic factors in children’s comprehension of cleft constructions. Language Acquisition, 25(3), 284-314.
  • Aydın, Ö. (2007). The comprehension of Turkish relative clauses in second language acquisition and agrammatism. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28(2), 295-315.
  • Baltaxe, C. A. (1984). Use of contrastive stress in normal, aphasic, and autistic children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 27(1), 97-105.
  • Bever, T.G. (1970). The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In R. Hayes. (Ed.), Cognition and language development. New York: Wiley.
  • Calhoun, S. (2010). The centrality of metrical structure in signalling information structure: A probabilistic perspective. Language, 1-42.
  • Chomsky, N. (1971). Deep structure, surface structure, and semantic interpretation. Semantics, ed. by D. Steinberg ve L. Jakobovits, 183-216, Cambridge.
  • Cinque, G. (1993). A null theory of phrase and compound stress. Linguistic inquiry, 24(2), 239-297.
  • Comrie, B. (1989). Language universals and linguistic typology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  • Crain, S., ve McKee, C. (1985). Acquisition of structural restrictions on anaphora. In North East Linguistics Society, 16 (1).
  • Crain, S., ve Thornton, R. (1998). Investigations in Universal Grammar. MIT Press.
  • Dick, F., Wulfeck, B., Krupa‐Kwiatkowski, M., ve Bates, E. (2004). The development of complex sentence interpretation in typically developing children compared with children with specific language impairments or early unilateral focal lesions. Developmental Science, 7(3), 360-377.
  • Erguvanlı-Taylan, E. (1984). The Function of Word order in Turkish Grammar. University of California Press.
  • Féry, C. (2013). Focus as prosodic alignment. Natural Language ve Linguistic Theory, 31, 683-734.
  • Féry, C. (2017). Intonation and Prosodic Structure. Cambridge University Press.
  • Friedmann, N., ve Novogrodsky, R. (2004). The acquisition of relative clause comprehension in Hebrew: A study of SLI and normal development. Journal of Child Language, 31(3), 661-681.
  • Furrow, D. (1984). Young children's use of prosody. Journal of Child Language, 11(1), 203-213.
  • Göksel, A., ve Özsoy, A. S. (2003). dA: a focus/topic-associated clitic in Turkish. Lingua, 113(11), 1143-1167.
  • Gualmini, A., Maciukaite, S., ve Crain, S. (2003). Children's insensitivity to contrastive stress in sentences with only. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 8(1).
  • Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Some aspects of the thematic organization of the English clause. Rand Corporation.
  • Hirsch, C., ve Wexler, K. (2006). Children’s passives and their resulting interpretation. In the Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition–North America, University of Connecticut Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 4. Storrs, CT: University of Connecticut. 125-136.
  • Hornby, P. A., ve Hass, W. A. (1970). Use of contrastive stress by preschool children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 13(2), 395-399.
  • Ivoseviç, S. ve Bekar, P. İ. (2015). Acoustic correlates of focus in Turkish. In Ankara Papers in Turkish and Turkic Linguistics. Edited by D. Zeyrek, Ç. Sağın Şimşek, U. Ataş and J. Rehbein. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 103, 20–27.
  • Krifka, M. (2008). Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 55(3-4), 243-276.
  • Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code. Nature reviews neuroscience, 5(11), 831-843.
  • Kurt, D. ve Deniz, N.D. (2023). Processing focus in Turkish. Languages, 8, 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010038.
  • Lempert, H., ve Kinsbourne, M. (1980). Preschool children's sentence comprehension: Strategies with respect to word order. Journal of Child Language, 7(2), 371-379.
  • Lieberman, M., ve Prince, A. (1977). On stress and linguistic rhythm. Linguistic Inquiry 8 (2), 249-336.
  • Ohba, A., Sano, T., ve Yamakoshi, K. (2019). Children’s Acquisition of Clefts Revisited: New Evidence from Japanese. Proceedings of BUCLD 43, 573-584.
  • Ohba, A., ve Yamakoshi, K. (2018). The Acquisition of Subject and Object Clefts in Child Japanese. In The Proceedings of the 13th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics.
  • Özge, D., Küntay, A., ve Snedeker, J. (2019). Why wait for the verb? Cognition 183, 152-180.
  • Özge, D., Marinis, T., ve Zeyrek, D. (2009). Comprehension of subject and object relative clauses in monolingual Turkish children. In the 14th International Conference on Turkish Linguistics, 341-350.
  • Özge, D., Marinis, T., ve Zeyrek, D. (2015). Incremental processing inhead-final child language: online comprehension of relative clauses in Turkish-speaking children and adults. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(9), 1230-1243.
  • Paterson, K. B., Liversedge, S. P., Rowland, C., ve Filik, R. (2003). Children's comprehension of sentences with focus particles. Cognition, 89(3), 263-294.
  • Reinhart, T. (2004). The processing cost of reference set computation: Acquisition of stress shift and focus. Language Acquisition, 12(2), 109-155.
  • Roland, D., Dick, F., ve Elman, J. L. (2007). Frequency of basic English grammatical structures: A corpus analysis. Journal of Memory and Language, 57(3), 348-379.
  • Rooth, M. (1992). A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics, 1. 75-116.
  • Rooth, M. E. (1985). Association with focus (Montague grammar, semantics, only, even) [Doktora tezi]. Massachusetts Amherst Üniversitesi.
  • Sarı, G. (2025a, January 16). EK A. Retrieved from osf.io/5z9n4.
  • Sarı, G. (2025b, January 16). EK B. Retrieved from osf.io/vc4gk.
  • Szendrői, K. (2004). Focus and the interaction between syntax and pragmatics. Lingua, 114(3), 229-254.
  • Szendrői, K., Bernard, C., Berger, F., Gervain, J., ve Höhle, B. (2018). Acquisition of prosodic focus marking by English, French, and German three-, four-, five-and six-year-olds. Journal of Child Language, 45(1), 219-241.
  • Tavakolian, S. (1981). The conjoined-clause analysis of relative clauses. Language Acquisition and Linguistic theory, 167, 187.
  • Thornton, R., Kiguchi, H., ve D'Onofrio, E. (2018). Cleft sentences and reconstruction in child language. Language, 405-431.
  • Topaloğlu, S. (2018). Children’s Comprehension of Presuppositions Introduced by Focus Particles: Evidence from Turkish. [Basılmamış Dilbilim Yüksek Lisans tezi]. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi.
  • Topaloğlu, S. ve Nakipoğlu, M. (2016). Children's Interpretation of the focus particle only. In Proceedings of the 40th Boston University Conference on Language Development. Cascadilla Press. https://www.bu.edu/bucld/files/2016/03/BUCLD40-Handbook.pdf
  • Topaloğlu, S. ve Nakipoğlu, M. (2017a). How Turkish-Speaking Children Interpret Preverbal sadece (‘only’): the Role of Prosody and Pragmatics. In Proceedings of the 41st Boston University Conference on Language Development. 665-678. Cascadilla Press. http://www.lingref.com/bucld/41/BUCLD41-54.pdf
  • Topaloğlu, S. ve Nakipoğlu, M. (2017b). Sınırlayıcı Odak Parçacığı Sadece’nin Edinimi. Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi, 1-28.
  • Topaloğlu, S. ve Nakipoğlu, M. (2019). Using Prosody to compute Alternative Sets: the case of the Turkish particle dA. In Proceedings of the 43rd Boston University Conference on Language Development. 679-692. Cascadilla Press. http://www.lingref.com/bucld/43/BUCLD43-53.pdf
  • Uzun, İ. P., Aydın, Ö., Kalaycıoglu, C., ve Ergenç, I., (2021). Prosodic Focus Marking in Turkish: An Electrophysiological Study. Studies in Psychology- Psikoloji Çalışmaları Dergisi, 41 (1), 331-364.
  • Uzundağ, B. A., ve Küntay, A. C. (2019). The acquisition and use of relative clauses in Turkish-learning children's conversational interactions: a cross-linguistic approach. Journal of Child Language, 46(6), 1142-1168.
  • Yumrutaş, N. (2009). Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Turkish. [Basılmamış Dilbilim Yüksek Lisans tezi]. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi.

Bürünsel Odak ve Ayrık Tümce Yapılarının Edinimi

Yıl 2025, Cilt: 36 Sayı: 2, 225 - 262, 30.12.2025

Gülfem Moorcroft , Mine Nakipoğlu

https://doi.org/10.18492/dad.1499805

Öz

Ayrık tümceler, tümcedeki belli bileşenleri bürün ve sözdizim ile vurgulayan ve önvarsayım içeren yapılardır. Bu tümcelerin başarılı olarak yorumlanması tümcede önvarsayılan (vurgusuz) ve yeni (vurgulanmış) bilginin ayırt edilebilmesine bağlıdır. Bu çalışma Türkçe edinen çocukların bürünsel odak ve ayrık tümceleri anlama becerilerini incelemektedir. İlk deneyde çocukların bürünsel odağı yorumlama yetenekleri ele alınmıştır. Bulgular, erken yaşlarda bürünsel nesne odağının özne odağına göre daha başarılı yorumlandığını ortaya koymuştur. Çocukların bürünsel özne odağını anlama düzeyleri beş yaş ve sonrasında artış göstermiştir. İkinci deney edimsel uyumun, yaşın ve tümce türünün çocukların ayrık tümce anlama süreçlerine etkilerini araştırmıştır. Sonuçlar, Türkçe edinen çocukların bahsi geçen faktörlerden bağımsız olarak özne ve nesne odaklı ayrık tümceleri başarıyla yorumlayabildiklerini ortaya koymuştur. Çocukların bürünsel odak anlama becerilerinde nesne odaklı tümceler için bir avantaj söz konusuyken ayrık tümce ediniminde özne ve nesne odaklı ayrık tümceler eşit oranda başarılı olarak yorumlanmıştır. Çalışmamız, Türkçe’nin sözdizimsel yapısının, çocukların anlama becerilerini önemli ölçüde etkilediğini ileri sürmektedir.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Türkçenin edinimi ayrık tümceler önvarsayım odak prozodi

Etik Beyan

Bu çalışma daha önce başka bir yerde yayımlanmamıştır. Başka bir dergide değerlendirme sürecinde değildir. Çalışmanın yayınlanması tüm yazarlar ve çalışmanın yapıldığı üniversitedeki/araştırma merkezindeki sorumlu makamlar tarafından örtük ya da açık olarak onaylanmıştır. Çalışma yayımlanmak için kabul edilirse, Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisinin yazılı izni olmadan başka bir basılı ya da elektronik ortamda Türkçe ya da başka bir dilde aynı biçimde yayımlanmayacaktır. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Etik Kurulu’ndan 17.01.2023 tarihli ve 108386 sayılı etik kurul onayı alınmıştır. Katılımcılar araştırma hakkında bilgilendirilmiş ve katılımcıların yasal vasilerinden bilgilendirilmiş onam alınmıştır.

Destekleyen Kurum

Çalışma için herhangi bir maddi destek alınmamıştır.

Kaynakça

  • Aravind, A., Freedman, E., Hackl, M., ve Wexler, K. (2016). Subject-object Asymmetries in the Acquisition of Clefts. In Proceedings of the 40th Boston University Conference on Language Development, 1-17. Aravind, A., Hackl, M., ve Wexler, K. (2018). Syntactic and pragmatic factors in children’s comprehension of cleft constructions. Language Acquisition, 25(3), 284-314.
  • Aydın, Ö. (2007). The comprehension of Turkish relative clauses in second language acquisition and agrammatism. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28(2), 295-315.
  • Baltaxe, C. A. (1984). Use of contrastive stress in normal, aphasic, and autistic children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 27(1), 97-105.
  • Bever, T.G. (1970). The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In R. Hayes. (Ed.), Cognition and language development. New York: Wiley.
  • Calhoun, S. (2010). The centrality of metrical structure in signalling information structure: A probabilistic perspective. Language, 1-42.
  • Chomsky, N. (1971). Deep structure, surface structure, and semantic interpretation. Semantics, ed. by D. Steinberg ve L. Jakobovits, 183-216, Cambridge.
  • Cinque, G. (1993). A null theory of phrase and compound stress. Linguistic inquiry, 24(2), 239-297.
  • Comrie, B. (1989). Language universals and linguistic typology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  • Crain, S., ve McKee, C. (1985). Acquisition of structural restrictions on anaphora. In North East Linguistics Society, 16 (1).
  • Crain, S., ve Thornton, R. (1998). Investigations in Universal Grammar. MIT Press.
  • Dick, F., Wulfeck, B., Krupa‐Kwiatkowski, M., ve Bates, E. (2004). The development of complex sentence interpretation in typically developing children compared with children with specific language impairments or early unilateral focal lesions. Developmental Science, 7(3), 360-377.
  • Erguvanlı-Taylan, E. (1984). The Function of Word order in Turkish Grammar. University of California Press.
  • Féry, C. (2013). Focus as prosodic alignment. Natural Language ve Linguistic Theory, 31, 683-734.
  • Féry, C. (2017). Intonation and Prosodic Structure. Cambridge University Press.
  • Friedmann, N., ve Novogrodsky, R. (2004). The acquisition of relative clause comprehension in Hebrew: A study of SLI and normal development. Journal of Child Language, 31(3), 661-681.
  • Furrow, D. (1984). Young children's use of prosody. Journal of Child Language, 11(1), 203-213.
  • Göksel, A., ve Özsoy, A. S. (2003). dA: a focus/topic-associated clitic in Turkish. Lingua, 113(11), 1143-1167.
  • Gualmini, A., Maciukaite, S., ve Crain, S. (2003). Children's insensitivity to contrastive stress in sentences with only. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 8(1).
  • Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Some aspects of the thematic organization of the English clause. Rand Corporation.
  • Hirsch, C., ve Wexler, K. (2006). Children’s passives and their resulting interpretation. In the Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition–North America, University of Connecticut Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 4. Storrs, CT: University of Connecticut. 125-136.
  • Hornby, P. A., ve Hass, W. A. (1970). Use of contrastive stress by preschool children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 13(2), 395-399.
  • Ivoseviç, S. ve Bekar, P. İ. (2015). Acoustic correlates of focus in Turkish. In Ankara Papers in Turkish and Turkic Linguistics. Edited by D. Zeyrek, Ç. Sağın Şimşek, U. Ataş and J. Rehbein. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 103, 20–27.
  • Krifka, M. (2008). Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 55(3-4), 243-276.
  • Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code. Nature reviews neuroscience, 5(11), 831-843.
  • Kurt, D. ve Deniz, N.D. (2023). Processing focus in Turkish. Languages, 8, 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010038.
  • Lempert, H., ve Kinsbourne, M. (1980). Preschool children's sentence comprehension: Strategies with respect to word order. Journal of Child Language, 7(2), 371-379.
  • Lieberman, M., ve Prince, A. (1977). On stress and linguistic rhythm. Linguistic Inquiry 8 (2), 249-336.
  • Ohba, A., Sano, T., ve Yamakoshi, K. (2019). Children’s Acquisition of Clefts Revisited: New Evidence from Japanese. Proceedings of BUCLD 43, 573-584.
  • Ohba, A., ve Yamakoshi, K. (2018). The Acquisition of Subject and Object Clefts in Child Japanese. In The Proceedings of the 13th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics.
  • Özge, D., Küntay, A., ve Snedeker, J. (2019). Why wait for the verb? Cognition 183, 152-180.
  • Özge, D., Marinis, T., ve Zeyrek, D. (2009). Comprehension of subject and object relative clauses in monolingual Turkish children. In the 14th International Conference on Turkish Linguistics, 341-350.
  • Özge, D., Marinis, T., ve Zeyrek, D. (2015). Incremental processing inhead-final child language: online comprehension of relative clauses in Turkish-speaking children and adults. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(9), 1230-1243.
  • Paterson, K. B., Liversedge, S. P., Rowland, C., ve Filik, R. (2003). Children's comprehension of sentences with focus particles. Cognition, 89(3), 263-294.
  • Reinhart, T. (2004). The processing cost of reference set computation: Acquisition of stress shift and focus. Language Acquisition, 12(2), 109-155.
  • Roland, D., Dick, F., ve Elman, J. L. (2007). Frequency of basic English grammatical structures: A corpus analysis. Journal of Memory and Language, 57(3), 348-379.
  • Rooth, M. (1992). A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics, 1. 75-116.
  • Rooth, M. E. (1985). Association with focus (Montague grammar, semantics, only, even) [Doktora tezi]. Massachusetts Amherst Üniversitesi.
  • Sarı, G. (2025a, January 16). EK A. Retrieved from osf.io/5z9n4.
  • Sarı, G. (2025b, January 16). EK B. Retrieved from osf.io/vc4gk.
  • Szendrői, K. (2004). Focus and the interaction between syntax and pragmatics. Lingua, 114(3), 229-254.
  • Szendrői, K., Bernard, C., Berger, F., Gervain, J., ve Höhle, B. (2018). Acquisition of prosodic focus marking by English, French, and German three-, four-, five-and six-year-olds. Journal of Child Language, 45(1), 219-241.
  • Tavakolian, S. (1981). The conjoined-clause analysis of relative clauses. Language Acquisition and Linguistic theory, 167, 187.
  • Thornton, R., Kiguchi, H., ve D'Onofrio, E. (2018). Cleft sentences and reconstruction in child language. Language, 405-431.
  • Topaloğlu, S. (2018). Children’s Comprehension of Presuppositions Introduced by Focus Particles: Evidence from Turkish. [Basılmamış Dilbilim Yüksek Lisans tezi]. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi.
  • Topaloğlu, S. ve Nakipoğlu, M. (2016). Children's Interpretation of the focus particle only. In Proceedings of the 40th Boston University Conference on Language Development. Cascadilla Press. https://www.bu.edu/bucld/files/2016/03/BUCLD40-Handbook.pdf
  • Topaloğlu, S. ve Nakipoğlu, M. (2017a). How Turkish-Speaking Children Interpret Preverbal sadece (‘only’): the Role of Prosody and Pragmatics. In Proceedings of the 41st Boston University Conference on Language Development. 665-678. Cascadilla Press. http://www.lingref.com/bucld/41/BUCLD41-54.pdf
  • Topaloğlu, S. ve Nakipoğlu, M. (2017b). Sınırlayıcı Odak Parçacığı Sadece’nin Edinimi. Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi, 1-28.
  • Topaloğlu, S. ve Nakipoğlu, M. (2019). Using Prosody to compute Alternative Sets: the case of the Turkish particle dA. In Proceedings of the 43rd Boston University Conference on Language Development. 679-692. Cascadilla Press. http://www.lingref.com/bucld/43/BUCLD43-53.pdf
  • Uzun, İ. P., Aydın, Ö., Kalaycıoglu, C., ve Ergenç, I., (2021). Prosodic Focus Marking in Turkish: An Electrophysiological Study. Studies in Psychology- Psikoloji Çalışmaları Dergisi, 41 (1), 331-364.
  • Uzundağ, B. A., ve Küntay, A. C. (2019). The acquisition and use of relative clauses in Turkish-learning children's conversational interactions: a cross-linguistic approach. Journal of Child Language, 46(6), 1142-1168.
  • Yumrutaş, N. (2009). Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Turkish. [Basılmamış Dilbilim Yüksek Lisans tezi]. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi.
Toplam 51 adet kaynakça vardır.

Ayrıntılar

Birincil Dil Türkçe
Konular Bilişsel Dilbilimi, Çocuğun Dil Edinimi
Bölüm Araştırma Makalesi
Yazarlar

Gülfem Moorcroft 0009-0001-1027-246X

Mine Nakipoğlu 0000-0001-8196-1580

Gönderilme Tarihi 19 Haziran 2024
Kabul Tarihi 20 Aralık 2025
Yayımlanma Tarihi 30 Aralık 2025
Yayımlandığı Sayı Yıl 2025 Cilt: 36 Sayı: 2

Kaynak Göster

APA Moorcroft, G., & Nakipoğlu, M. (2025). Bürünsel Odak ve Ayrık Tümce Yapılarının Edinimi. Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi, 36(2), 225-262. https://doi.org/10.18492/dad.1499805

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Dergi DOI:10.18492/dad