DOCTORAL DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Acquisition of Word Order and Particle Order in Turkish

虽然许多语言学家认为所有的语言都有一个共同的通用语法，但表面上语言差异很大。例如，英语等语言只允许一种基本词序（固定词序语言），而土耳其语等语言允许多种词序。此外，还有一些孤立的语言，比如汉语，它们的语法关系是通过词序来表达的，而不是通过添加或改变单词的形态结构来表达的；还有一些语言，比如土耳其语，它们的语法关系是通过屈折词的序列来表达的，每个屈折词都表达一个特定的语法意义。尽管语言之间存在差异，但大多数语言习得研究都集中在词序固定、孤立或屈折的语言上。如果我们要检验习得理论的解释和描述的充分性，就必须对黏着性和自由词序语言进行调查。在这个项目中，我们将使用理解、模仿和判断实验的数据来研究1.5 - 6岁儿童对土耳其语作为第一语言的习得。这些数据将用于解决以下关于语言习得的基本问题：幼儿是否倾向于认为他们正在学习的语言有固定的词序？他们知道自由词序语言的结构限制吗？孩子们什么时候开始在自由语序语言中协调结构限制和话语考虑？幼儿是否倾向于认为语法小品是以固定的顺序连接的？儿童是否比不属于普遍秩序的粒子更早获得被认为属于普遍秩序的粒子？

Although many linguists argue that all languages share a common universal grammar, superficially languages vary tremendously. For example, some languages such as English allow only one basic word order (fixed word order languages), while languages such as Turkish permit many word orders. In addition, there are isolating languages such as Mandarin in which grammatical relationships are expressed through word order, and not by adding to or changing morphological structure of words, and languages such as Turkish in which grammatical relationships are expressed via sequences of inflectional particles, each of which expresses a specific grammatical meaning. Despite differences which exist among languages, most language acquisition research has concentrated on languages that are fixed word order and either isolating or inflecting. Investigations of agglutinative, free word order languages are necessary if we are to test explanatory and descriptive adequacy of theories of acquisition.In this project we will use data from comprehension, imitation and judgment experiments to study the acquisition of Turkish as a first language by children between 1.5 and 6 years of age. These data will be used to address the following fundamental questions about language acquisition:1. Are young children predisposed to assume that the language they are acquiring has a fixed word order?2. Do they know the structural restrictions on a free word order language?3. When do children start reconciling structural restrictions and discourse considerations in a free word order language?4. Are young children predisposed to assume that grammatical particles are attached in a fixed order?5. Do children acquire particles that are putatively part of a universal ordering earlier than particles that are not?