Acquisition of Turkish demonstrative pronouns in children

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.

Acquisition of L2 English spatial deixes by Arabic-speaking children

“…Unlike the original procedure of De Villiers and De Villiers (1974) , the experimenter in this study used a puppet to utter testing sentences in order to avoid any non-linguistic cues, such as eye gaze. It is similar to the studies of Muşlu (2015) and González-Peña et al (2020) where they used a puppet when they uttered the testing sentences to avoid any non-linguistic cues which may help children to choose the intended object ( Figure 1 ).…”

“…There are many conducted studies about the acquisition of deictic words whether in the first or second language. The acquisition of deixis has been a subject of some recent studies ( Zhao, 2007 ; Krasnoshchekova, 2012 ; Muşlu, 2015 ; Gonzalez Pena, 2020 ). There are several issues which have been discussed regarding the acquisition of deictic words.…”

“…According to many results, the children’s performance in the different perspectives was worse than in the same perspective. They never see things from anybody else’s point of view except their own ( Zhao, 2007 ; Muşlu, 2015 ). According to Zhao (2007) , all children think in an egocentric way.…”

“…The use of cues has also an impact on the children’s ability to understand the demonstratives. Muşlu (2015) conducted a study which aims to provide information about the development of children’s comprehension of demonstrative pronouns in their first language (Turkish). Moreover, the researcher tried to find out whether there is an age effect on the children’s comprehension or not.…”

“…There are many conducted studies about the first language acquisition of spatial deixis in many different languages. The acquisition of spatial deixis (demonstratives) has become a new subject again in some recent works (for a review see Zhao, 2007 ; Krasnoshchekova, 2012 ; Muşlu, 2015 ; Gonzalez Pena, 2020 ). Based on our readings, there is a small number of studies which have been conducted about the acquisition of spatial deixis as a second language.…”