Acquisition of Turkish demonstrative pronouns in children

Authors

  • Meltem Muşlu University Of Gaziantep

Keywords:

Demonstrative pronouns, Egocentrism, First language acquisition, Deixis

Abstract

Joint focus of attention is one of the most crucial elements in effective communication. Demonstrative pronouns (DPs) have an important role in providing this joint focus of attention. Although demonstratives are a prevalent topic, not many studies are conducted to find out the developmental stages of them. Therefore, the current study attempts to find out children’s comprehension of DPs in Turkish. Based on the results of the study, children’s developmental stages in different age groups are provided. Turkish has a three-way distinction in its demonstrative pronoun system: bu (this), şu (this/that) and o (that). The subjects of the study were 12 children of ages 3,4 and 5. The results of the study were intriguing and they showed that learning the demonstrative system in Turkish might follow U-shaped learning pattern. Also, the results seem to support egocentrism hypothesis that children under the age of six had difficulty in shifting the deictic center when they and the experimenter have a different perspective. The use of şu at the age of 4 also showed surprising results.

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Author Biography

Meltem Muşlu, University Of Gaziantep

Meltem Muşlu is currently an English Instructor at the University of Gaziantep, School of Foreign Languages. She has been teaching languages (Turkish and English) at different levels for almost 10 years in different institutions including University of California, Santa Barbara and University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has also taught academic and creative writing, and Turkish-English translation. She holds a BA, MA and PhD in applied linguistics. Her research interests include teaching writing, program and materials development, corpus linguistics and language acquisition.

References

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Published

2015-01-26

How to Cite

Muşlu, M. (2015). Acquisition of Turkish demonstrative pronouns in children. Journal of Human Sciences, 12(1), 417–426. Retrieved from https://j-humansciences.com/ojs/index.php/IJHS/article/view/3104

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 1 (2015)

Section

Linguistic

License

Uluslararası İnsan Bilimleri Dergisi ISSN:1303-5134
International Journal of Human Sciences ISSN:2458-9489
 
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