TY - THES A1 - Atasoy, Atilla T1 - Production, perception, and processing of focus in Turkish N2 - The main goal of this dissertation is to experimentally investigate how focus is realised, perceived, and processed by native Turkish speakers, independent of preconceived notions of positional restrictions. Crucially, there are various issues and scientific debates surrounding focus in the Turkish language in the existing literature (chapter 1). It is argued in this dissertation that two factors led to the stagnant literature on focus in Turkish: the lack of clearly defined, modern understandings of information structure and its fundamental notion of focus, and the ongoing and ill-defined debate surrounding the question of whether there is an immediately preverbal focus position in Turkish. These issues gave rise to specific research questions addressed across this dissertation. Specifically, we were interested in how the focus dimensions such as focus size (comparing narrow constituent and broad sentence focus), focus target (comparing narrow subject and narrow object focus), and focus type (comparing new-information and contrastive focus) affect Turkish focus realisation and, in turn, focus comprehension when speakers are provided syntactic freedom to position focus as they see fit. To provide data on these core goals, we presented three behavioural experiments based on a systematic framework of information structure and its notions (chapter 2): (i) a production task with trigger wh-questions and contextual animations manipulated to elicit the focus dimensions of interest (chapter 3), (ii) a timed acceptability judgment task in listening to the recorded answers in our production task (chapter 4), and (iii) a self-paced reading task to gather on-line processing data (chapter 5). Based on the results of the conducted experiments, multiple conclusions are made in this dissertation (chapter 6). Firstly, this dissertation demonstrated empirically that there is no focus position in Turkish, neither in the sense of a strict focus position language nor as a focally loaded position facilitating focus perception and/or processing. While focus is, in fact, syntactically variable in the Turkish preverbal area, this is a consequence of movement triggered by other IS aspects like topicalisation and backgrounding, and the observational markedness of narrow subject focus compared to narrow object focus. As for focus type in Turkish, this dimension is not associated with word order in production, perception, or processing. Significant acoustic correlates of focus size (broad sentence focus vs narrow constituent focus) and focus target (narrow subject focus vs narrow object focus) were observed in fundamental frequency and intensity, representing focal boost, (postfocal) deaccentuation, and the presence or absence of a phrase-final rise in the prenucleus, while the perceivability of these effects remains to be investigated. In contrast, no acoustic correlates of focus type in simple, three-word transitive structures were observed, with focus types being interchangeable in mismatched question-answer pairs. Overall, the findings of this dissertation highlight the need for experimental investigations regarding focus in Turkish, as theoretical predictions do not necessarily align with experimental data. As such, the fallacy of implying causation from correlation should be strictly kept in mind, especially when constructions coincide with canonical structures, such as the immediately preverbal position in narrow object foci. Finally, numerous open questions remain to be explored, especially as focus and word order in Turkish are multifaceted. As shown, givenness is a confounding factor when investigating focus types, while thematic role assignment potentially confounds word order preferences. Further research based on established, modern information structure frameworks is needed, with chapter 5 concluding with specific recommendations for such future research. N2 - Das Hauptziel dieser Dissertation war die experimentelle Untersuchung, wie Muttersprachler des Türkischen Fokus realisieren, wahrnehmen und sprachlich verarbeiten, unabhängig von vorgefassten Meinungen betreffend Positionsbeschränkungen. Entscheidend ist, dass es in der vorhandenen Literatur verschiedene Probleme und wissenschaftliche Debatten zum Thema Fokus in der türkischen Sprache gibt (Kapitel 1). In dieser Dissertation wird argumentiert, dass zwei Faktoren zu der stagnierenden Forschung zum Thema Fokus im Türkischen beitrugen: Das Fehlen eines klar definierten modernen Verständnisses der Informationsstruktur und ihres grundlegenden Begriffs von Fokus und die anhaltende und unklare Debatte um die Frage, ob es im Türkischen eine unmittelbar präverbale Fokusposition gibt. Diese Probleme führten zu den jeweiligen Forschungsfragen, die in dieser Dissertation behandelt wurden. Ausdrücklich lag das Interesse darauf, wie die Fokusdimensionen Fokusgröße, der Vergleich von schmalem Fokus (narrow focus) auf der Konstituente und breitem, projiziertem Fokus (broad focus) auf dem Satz, Fokusziel, der Vergleich von schmalem Subjektfokus und Objektfokus, und Fokustyp, der Vergleich von Fokus auf neuer Information (new-inforamtion focus) und Kontrastfokus, die Fokusrealisierung und -wahrnehmung im Türkischen beeinflussen, wenn den Sprechern syntaktische Freiheit gegeben wird Fokus nach Belieben im Satz zu positionieren. Basierend auf einen systematischen theoretischen Rahmen der Informationsstruktur und ihrer Begriffe (Kapitel 2), wurden drei Verhaltensexperimente in dieser Dissertation präsentiert, um Daten zu diesen Kernzielen vorzulegen: (i) ein Produktionsexperiment mit Fragen und kontextbezogenen Animationen als Trigger manipuliert, um die obengenannten Fokusdimensionen zu untersuchen, (ii) ein zeitlich gemessenes Akzeptanzexperiment (timed acceptability judgment task) beim Anhören der Antworten aufgezeichnet in unserem Produktionsexperiment und (iii) ein selbstbestimmtes Leseexperiment (self-paced reading task) zur Untersuchung der sprachlichen Verarbeitung (on-line language processing). Auf der Grundlage der Ergebnisse der durchgeführten Experimente werden in dieser Dissertation mehrere Schlussfolgerungen gezogen (Kapitel 6). Diese Dissertation hat zum einen empirisch nachgewiesen, dass es im Türkischen keine Fokusposition gibt, weder im Sinne einer strikten Fokusposition noch als fokal geladene Position, die die Fokuswahrnehmung und/oder -verarbeitung erleichtert. Während Fokus im türkischen präverbalen Bereich tatsächlich syntaktisch variabel ist, ist dies eine Folge syntaktischer Strategien anderer IS-Aspekte, wie etwa Topikalisierung und Hintergrundbildung (backgrounding), wie auch die additive Kennzeichnung schmaler Subjektfokusse im Vergleich zum Objektfokus. Was Fokustyp im Türkischen betrifft, ist diese Fokusdimension nicht mit Wortstellung in Produktion, Wahrnehmung oder Verarbeitung assoziiert. Signifikante akustische Korrelate der Fokusgröße (breiter Satzfokus vs. schmalen Konstituentenfokus) und Fokusziel (schmaler Subjektfokus vs. schmalen Objektfokus) in Grundfrequenz und Intensität in Form von Fokusverstärkung (focal boost), (postfokaler) Deakzentuierung und dem Vorhandensein oder Fehlen eines phrasenfinalen Anstiegs im Pränukleus wurden beobachtet, während die Wahrnehmbarkeit dieser Effekte noch zu untersuchen ist. Im Gegensatz dazu wurden keine akustischen Korrelate für Fokustyp in simplen transitiven Dreiwortstrukturen beobachtet, wobei Fokustypen in nicht übereinstimmenden Frage-Antwort-Paaren austauschbar waren. Insgesamt unterstreichen die oben skizzierten Ergebnisse dieser Dissertation die Notwendigkeit experimenteller Untersuchungen zu Fokus im Türkischen, da theoretische Vorhersagen nicht immer mit experimentellen Daten übereinstimmen. Der Trugschluss, dass Korrelation Kausalität impliziert, sollte strikt im Auge behalten werden, insbesondere wenn Konstruktionen mit kanonischen Strukturen übereinstimmen, wie etwa die unmittelbar präverbale Position in schmalen Objektfokussen. Schließlich sind noch zahlreiche offene Fragen zu klären, zumal Fokus und Wortstellung im Türkischen vielfältig sind. Wie in dieser Dissertation gezeigt wurde, ist Gegebenheit ein Störfaktor in der Untersuchung von Fokustypen. Ebenfalls ist zu vermuten, dass thematische Rollenzuweisung im Türkischen Präferenzen in Wortstellung hervorrufen können, die als Fokuseffekte fehlinterpretiert werden könnten. Weitere Forschung auf der Grundlage etablierter theoretischer Informationsstrukturrahmen ist erforderlich. Kapitel 5 schließt mit konkreten Empfehlungen für solche zukünftigen Untersuchungen ab. T2 - Produktion, Wahrnehmung und Verarbeitung von Fokus im Türkischen KW - focus KW - information structure KW - Turkish KW - focus realisation KW - Türkisch KW - Fokus KW - Fokusrealisierung KW - Informationsstruktur Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-548156 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Uygun, Serkan A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Morphological processing in heritage speakers BT - a masked priming study on the Turkish aorist JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - Previous research has shown that heritage speakers struggle with inflectional morphology. 'Limitations of online resources' for processing a non-dominant language has been claimed as one possible reason for these difficulties. To date, however, there is very little experimental evidence on real-time language processing in heritage speakers. Here we report results from a masked priming experiment with 97 bilingual (Turkish/German) heritage speakers and a control group of 40 non-heritage speakers of Turkish examining regular and irregular forms of the Turkish aorist. We found that, for the regular aorist, heritage speakers use the same morphological decomposition mechanism ('affix stripping') as control speakers, whereas for processing irregularly inflected forms they exhibited more variability (i.e., less homogeneous performance) than the control group. Heritage speakers also demonstrated semantic priming effects. At a more general level, these results indicate that heritage speakers draw on multiple sources of information for recognizing morphologically complex words. KW - Turkish KW - morphology KW - aorist KW - priming KW - variability KW - processing Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000577 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 24 IS - 3 SP - 415 EP - 426 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schroeder, Christoph T1 - The advanced acquisition of orthography in heritage Turkish in Germany JF - Written language & literacy N2 - The paper investigates Turkish texts from heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany in a pseudo-longitudinal setting, looking at pupils' texts from the 5th, 7th, 10th and 12th grades. Two types of dynamics are identified in the advanced acquisition(1) of Turkish orthography in the heritage context. One is the dynamic of language contact, where in certain areas of the orthography, we find a re-interpretation of Turkish principles according to the German model. However, this changes as the pupils grow up. The second dynamic is the heritage situation. The heritage situation on one side leads to the establishment of new practices, and it also leads to a higher degree of variability of spelling solutions in those areas, where the orthographic system of Turkish poses challenges to every writer, whether monolingual and growing up in Turkey or heritage speaker. KW - Turkish KW - heritage language KW - orthography KW - orthographic word KW - advanced acquisition of KW - language contact Turkish-German Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00043.sch SN - 1387-6732 SN - 1570-6001 VL - 23 IS - 2 SP - 251 EP - 271 PB - John Benjamins Publishing Co. CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jacob, Gunnar A1 - Safak, Duygu Fatma A1 - Demir, Orhan A1 - Kirkici, Bilal T1 - Preserved morphological processing in heritage speakers BT - a masked priming study on Turkish JF - Second language research N2 - In a masked morphological priming experiment, we compared the processing of derived and inflected morphologically complex Turkish words in heritage speakers of Turkish living in Berlin and in native speakers of Turkish raised and living in Turkey. The results show significant derivational and inflectional priming effects of a similar magnitude in the heritage group and the control group. For both participant groups, semantic and orthographic control conditions indicate that these priming effects are genuinely morphological in nature, and cannot be due to semantic or orthographic similarity between prime and target. These results suggest that morphological processing in heritage speakers is based on the same fundamental processing mechanisms as in prototypical native speakers. We conclude that heritage speakers, despite the fact that they have acquired the language in a particular setting and were exposed to a relatively limited amount of input, can nevertheless develop native-like processing mechanisms for complex words. KW - derivation KW - heritage speakers KW - inflection KW - morphological processing KW - Turkish Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658318764535 SN - 0267-6583 SN - 1477-0326 VL - 35 IS - 2 SP - 173 EP - 194 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lago Huvelle, Maria Sol A1 - Gracanin-Yuksek, Martina A1 - Safak, Duygu Fatma A1 - Demir, Orhan A1 - Kirkici, Bilal A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Straight from the horse’s mouth Agreement attraction effects with Turkish possessors JF - Linguistic approaches to bilingualism N2 - We investigated the comprehension of subject-verb agreement in Turkish-German bilinguals using two tasks. The first task elicited speeded judgments to verb number violations in sentences that contained plural genitive modifiers. We addressed whether these modifiers elicited attraction errors, which have supported the use of a memory retrieval mechanism in monolingual comprehension studies. The second task examined the comprehension of a language-specific constraint of Turkish against plural-marked verbs with overt plural subjects. Bilinguals showed a reduced application of this constraint, as compared to Turkish monolinguals. Critically, both groups showed similar rates of attraction, but the bilingual group accepted ungrammatical sentences more often. We propose that the similarity in attraction rates supports the use of the same retrieval mechanism, but that bilinguals have more problems than monolinguals in the mapping of morphological to abstract agreement features during speeded comprehension, which results in increased acceptability of ungrammatical sentences. KW - agreement attraction KW - bilingualism KW - Turkish Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.17019.lag SN - 1879-9264 SN - 1879-9272 VL - 9 IS - 3 SP - 398 EP - 426 PB - John Benjamins Publishing Co. CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jacob, Gunnar A1 - Kirkici, Bilal T1 - The processing of morphologically complex words in a specific speaker group A masked-priming study with Turkish heritage speakers JF - The mental lexicon N2 - The present study investigates to what extent morphological priming varies across different groups of native speakers of a language. In two masked-priming experiments, we investigate the processing of morphologically complex Turkish words in Turkish heritage speakers raised and living in Germany. Materials and experimental design were based on Kırkıcı and Clahsen’s (2013) study on morphological processing in Turkish native speakers and L2 learners, allowing for direct comparisons between the three groups. Experiment 1 investigated priming effects for morphologically related prime-target pairs. Heritage speakers showed a similar pattern of results as the L1 comparison group, with significant priming effects for prime-target pairs with inflected primes (e.g. ‘sorar-sor’ asks-ask) as well as for prime-target pairs with derived primes (e.g. ‘sağlık-sağ’ health-healthy). In Experiment 2, we measured priming effects for prime-target pairs which were semantically and morphologically unrelated, but only related with regard to orthographic overlap (e.g. ‘devre-dev’ period-giant). Unlike both L1 speakers raised in Turkey and highly proficient L2 learners, heritage speakers also showed significant priming effects in this condition. Our results suggest that heritage speakers differ from both native speakers and L2 learners in that they rely more on (orthographic) surface form properties of the stimulus during early stages of word recognition, at the expense of morphological decomposition. KW - heritage speakers KW - complex words KW - morphological decomposition KW - masked priming KW - Turkish Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.11.2.06jac SN - 1871-1340 SN - 1871-1375 VL - 11 SP - 308 EP - 328 PB - John Benjamins Publishing Co. CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Arslan, Seçkin A1 - Bamyaci, Elif A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - A characterization of verb use in Turkish agrammatic narrative speech JF - Philosophische Rundschau N2 - This study investigates the characteristics of narrative-speech production and the use of verbs in Turkish agrammatic speakers (n = 10) compared to non-brain-damaged controls (n = 10). To elicit narrative-speech samples, personal interviews and storytelling tasks were conducted. Turkish has a large and regular verb inflection paradigm where verbs are inflected for evidentiality (i.e. direct versus indirect evidence available to the speaker). Particularly, we explored the general characteristics of the speech samples (e.g. utterance length) and the uses of lexical, finite and non-finite verbs and direct and indirect evidentials. The results show that speech rate is slow, verbs per utterance are lower than normal and the verb diversity is reduced in the agrammatic speakers. Verb inflection is relatively intact; however, a trade-off pattern between inflection for direct evidentials and verb diversity is found. The implications of the data are discussed in connection with narrative-speech production studies on other languages. KW - Agrammatism KW - discourse-linking KW - finiteness KW - evidentiality KW - narrative speech KW - Turkish KW - verbs Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3109/02699206.2016.1144224 SN - 0269-9206 SN - 1464-5076 VL - 30 SP - 449 EP - 469 PB - J. C. B. Mohr CY - Philadelphia ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Rothweiler, Monika A1 - Sterner, Franziska A1 - Chilla, Solveig T1 - Linguistic markers of specific language impairment in bilingual children: the case of verb morphology JF - Clinical linguistics & phonetics KW - Bilingualism KW - German KW - morphology KW - SLI KW - Turkish Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3109/02699206.2014.886726 SN - 0269-9206 SN - 1464-5076 VL - 28 IS - 9 SP - 709 EP - 721 PB - Taylor & Francis Group CY - London ER -