Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T09:29:26.801Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The interpretation of logical connectives in Turkish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2015

VASFİYE GEÇKİN ,
STEPHEN CRAIN  and
ROSALIND THORNTON
VASFİYE GEÇKİN*
Affiliation:
Boğaziçi University, Turkey
STEPHEN CRAIN
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Australia
ROSALIND THORNTON
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: Vasfiye Geçkin, Boǧaziçi University, School of Foreign Languages, Istanbul, Turkey; e-mail: vgeckin@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigated how Turkish-speaking children and adults interpret negative sentences with disjunction (English or) and ones with conjunction (English and). The goal was to see whether Turkish-speaking children and adults assigned the same interpretation to both kinds of sentences and, if not, to determine the source of the differences. Turkish-speaking children and adults were found to assign different interpretations to negative sentences with disjunction just in case the nouns in the disjunction phrase were marked with accusative case. For children, negation took scope over disjunction regardless of case marking, whereas, for adults, disjunction took scope over negation if the disjunctive phrases were case marked. Both groups assigned the same interpretation to negative sentences with conjunction; both case-marked and non-case-marked conjunction phrases took scope over negation. The findings are taken as evidence for a ‘subset’ principle of language learnability that dictates children's initial scope assignments.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , July 2016 , pp. 784 - 810
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Berwick, R. (1985). The acquisition of syntactic knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. & Hanlon, C. (1970). Derivational complexity and the order of acquisition of child speech. In Hayes, J. R. (ed.), Cognition and the development of language (pp. 11–53). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Chierchia, G., Crain, S., Guasti, M. T., Gualmini, A. & Meroni, L. (2001). The acquisition of disjunction: evidence for a grammatical view of scalar implicatures. In Do, A. H-J., Dóminguez, L. & Johansen, A. (eds), Proceedings of the 25th Boston University Conference on Language Development, 157–68. Somerville: MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Crain, S. (1991). Language acquisition in the absence of experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14, 597–650.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crain, S. (2002). The continuity assumption. In Lasser, I. (ed.), The process of language acquisition (pp. 3–24). New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Crain, S. (2012). Emergence of meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Crain, S., Gardner, A., Gualmini, A. & Rabbin, B. (2002). Children's command of Negation. In Otsu, Y. (ed.), Proceedings of the Third Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (pp. 71–95). Tokyo: Hituzi Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Crain, S., Goro, T., Notley, N. & Zhou, P. (2013). A parametric account of scope in child language. In Stavrakaki, S., Lalioti, M. & Konstantinopoulou, P. (eds), Advances in language acquisition (pp. 63–71). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing.Google Scholar
Crain, S., Ni, W. & Conway, L. (1994). Learning, parsing and modularity. In Clifton, C., Frazer, L. & Rayner, K. (eds), Perspectives on sentence processing (pp. 443–67). Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Crain, S. & Pietroski, P. M. (2001). Nature, nurture and Universal Grammar. Linguistics and Philosophy 24, 139–85.Google Scholar
Crain, S. & Thornton, R. (1998). Investigations in Universal Grammar: a guide to experiments on the acquisition of syntax and semantics. Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Geçkin, V., Thornton, R. & Crain, S. (in prep.). Children's interpretation of disjunction in negative sentences: a comparison of Turkish and German.Google Scholar
Goro, T. (2004). The emergence of Universal Grammar in the emergence of language: the acquisition of Japanese logical connectives and positive polarity. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Goro, T. (2007). Language-specific constraints on scope interpretation in first language acquisition. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Goro, T. & Akiba, S. (2004a). The acquisition of disjunction and positive polarity in Japanese. In Chand, V., Kelleher, A., Rodriguez, A. J. & Schmeiser, B. (eds), WCCFL 23 Proceedings (pp. 251–64). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Goro, T. & Akiba, S. (2004b). Japanese disjunction and the acquisition of positive polarity. In Otsu, Y. (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (pp. 137–62). Tokyo: Hituzi Shobo Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Göksel, A. & Kerslake, C. (2005). Turkish: a comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. (eds), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gualmini, A. & Crain, S. (2002). Why no child or adult must learn De Morgan's Laws. In Skarabela, B., Fish, S. & H-J, A.. Do, (eds), Proceedings of the 27th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 243–54). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Gualmini, A. & Crain, S. (2004). Operator conditioning. In Brugos, A., Micciulla, L. & Smith, C. E. (eds), Proceedings of the 28th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 232–43). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Gualmini, A. & Crain, S. (2005). The structure of children's linguistic knowledge. Linguistic Inquiry 36, 463–73.Google Scholar
Jing, C., Crain, S. & Hsu, C. (2005). The interpretation of focus in Chinese: child vs. adult language. In Otsu, Y. (ed.), Proceedings of the 6th Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (pp. 165–90). Tokyo: Hituzi Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Lee, O. (2010). Acquisition of Korean disjunction under negation. Working Papers in Linguistics 41(7), 1–12. University of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Marcus, G. F. (1993). Negative evidence in language acquisition. Cognition 46, 53–85.Google Scholar
Morgan, J. L. & Travis, L. (1989). Limits on negative information on language input. Journal of Child Language 16, 531–52.Google Scholar
Moscati, V. & Crain, S. (2014). When negation and epistemic modality combine: the role of information strength in child language. Language Learning and Development 10(36), 345–80.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, A. (2002). Hungarian disjunctions and positive polarity. In Kenesei, I. & Siptar, P. (eds), Approaches to Hungarian 8 (pp. 217–41). Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.Google Scholar
Verbuk, A. (2007). The acquisition of the Russian Or. In Bainbridge, E. & Agbayani, B. (eds), Proceedings of the Thirty-fourth Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL 2006) (pp. 443–55). Fresno: Department of Linguistics, California State University Fresno.Google Scholar