F. Nihan Ketrez | Istanbul Bilgi University (original) (raw)

Papers by F. Nihan Ketrez

Taikomoji kalbotyra, Dec 28, 2023

BUCLA8, 2023

Young children are observed to have a non-adult-like scope interpretation of indefinite objects. ... more Young children are observed to have a non-adult-like scope interpretation of indefinite objects. This chapter presents two experiments that tested the scope of accusative-marked and non-case-marked indefinite objects with respect to the adverb twice in Turkish. The first experiment, an act-out task, shows that children's treatment of accusative-marked indefinite objects is not adult-like, although they have a high preference for a wide scope reading of the object when it bears a case morpheme. The second experiment, a follow-up to the first one, shows that the high wide scope reading observed in the first experiment is misleading and the children allow a narrow scope reading of the accusative marked objects, which is not possible in adult speech. The study complements the prior work on the scope of indefinite objects with respect to negation (Ketrez 2015) by showing that non-adult-like narrow scope of indefinite objects in child grammars is a more general phenomenon, observed in various contexts, not only with respect to negation.

Languages 8(4), 2023

Whether non-case-marked objects with and without the numeral bir in Turkish have the same structu... more Whether non-case-marked objects with and without the numeral bir in Turkish have the same structural properties or not has been a topic of discussion for decades. This study aims to contribute to this discussion with experimental data that compares the comprehension of these object types along with their accusative-marked indefinite counterparts in terms of their scope with respect to negation by four-, five-, and six-year-old children as well as adults. The results suggest that both non-case-marked objects with and without bir contrast with accusative-marked indefinite objects and have a narrow scope with respect to negation in adults’ speech. However, bir can still have a main effect on the interpretation of the objects, just like the accusative case, and unlike non-case-marked objects without bir, objects with bir may scope over negation. Children treat all object types alike at age four and distinguish objects with and without bir at age five. These findings are compatible with an account that assumes different structures for two types of non-case-marked objects.

Journal of Child Language, 2022

Inflectional morphology provides a unique platform for a discussion of whether morphological prod... more Inflectional morphology provides a unique platform for a discussion of whether morphological productivity is rule-based or analogy-based. The present study testing 140 children (range = 29 to 97 months; M(SD) = 64.1(18.8)) on an elicited production task investigated the acquisition of the irregular distribution in the Turkish aorist. Results suggested that to discover the allomorphs of the Turkish aorist, children initially carried out similarity comparisons between analogous exemplars, which helped them tap into phonological features to induce generalizations for regulars and irregulars. Thereafter to tackle the irregularity, children entertained competing hypotheses yielding overregularizations and irregularizations. While the trajectory of overregularizations implicated the gradual formulation of an abstraction based on type-frequency, irregularizations suggested both intrusion of analogous exemplars and children’s attempts to default to an erroneous micro-generalization. Our fin...

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 2021

Children show sex differences in early speech development, with girls producing a greater number ... more Children show sex differences in early speech development, with girls producing a greater number and variety of words at an earlier age than boys (Berglund et al. in Scand J Psychol 46(6): 485–491, 2005)—a pattern that also becomes evident in gesture (Butterworth and Morisette in J Reprod Infant Psychol 14(3): 219–231, 1996). Importantly, parents show variability in how they produce speech when interacting with their singleton sons vs. daughters (i.e., Cherry and Lewis in Dev Psychol 12: 278–282, 1976; Leaper et al. in Dev Psychol 34: 3–27, 1998). However, it is unknown whether the variability in speech input extends to different twin dyads or becomes evident in gesture input. In this study, we examined parental gesture and speech input to 35 singleton (19 boys, 16 girls) and 62 twin (10 boy–boy, 9 girl–girl, and 12 girl–boy dyads) Turkish children (age range = 0;10–3;4) in parent–child interactions. We asked whether there is evidence of sex (girls vs. boys) or group (singletons vs. twins) differences in parents’ speech and gesture production, and whether these differences also become evident in different twin dyads (girl–girl, boy–boy, girl–boy). Our results, based on parent-child interactions, largely showed no evidence of sex or dyad-composition difference in either parent speech or gesture, but evidence of a group difference in gesture, with the parents of singletons providing a greater amount, diversity, and complexity of gestures than parents of twins in their interactions. These results suggest that differences in parent input to singletons vs. twins might become evident initially in gesture.

WECOL 2004, 2006

A Case-study on the Accusative Case in Turkish F. Nihan Ketrez University of Southern California ... more A Case-study on the Accusative Case in Turkish F. Nihan Ketrez University of Southern California 1. Introduction This is a case-study conducted on a monolingual Turkish child's accusative case omission errors recorded before the age 2; 0. The goal of the study is to show that the ...

Languages

Antwerp Papers in …, 2007

Although diminutives are commonly viewed as being typical of child speech and childdirected speec... more Although diminutives are commonly viewed as being typical of child speech and childdirected speech, their acquisition has so far neither been studied in a cross-linguistic perspective nor been related to recent theoretical developments in the study of diminutives and of the associated evaluative classes of augmentatives and pejoratives (Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi, 1994, 2001; Jurafsky, 1996). However, the cross-linguistic study of the development of diminutives is apt to shed light on much debated theoretical issues in the acquisition of morphology and on the impact of language typology on acquisition. We expect productivity, morphological transparency and salience in the input language to favour diminutive acquisition, which, in turn, may even facilitate the development of inflectional morphology. Our paper is meant to address these issues based on extensive longitudinal child data from typologically different languages. The data are transcribed and morphologically coded according to CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) within the “Cross-linguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition”. The main languages to be considered in this paper are the Indo-European inflecting-fusional languages Lithuanian, Croatian, Greek and German, as well as the agglutinating languages Turkish and HungarianVytauto Didžiojo universiteta

Journal of Child Language, 2021

Turkish-speaking dyzygotic twins (n = 21) and singletons (n = 23) were tested through a standard ... more Turkish-speaking dyzygotic twins (n = 21) and singletons (n = 23) were tested through a standard articulation test to observe whether their consonant articulations were related to their vocabulary sizes, recorded through CDI forms, at age 3;0. Twins were observed to lag behind their singleton peers and performed below the norm level in their production. Vocabulary size failed to predict twins’ articulation scores although it predicted the scores of the singleton group. The results suggested that articulation was not related to vocabulary size in twins. Exposure to sibling language was discussed as an alternative risk factor.

Journal of Child Language, 2013

ABSTRACTPrevious studies on the role of vowel harmony in word segmentation are based on artificia... more ABSTRACTPrevious studies on the role of vowel harmony in word segmentation are based on artificial languages where harmonic cues reliably signal word boundaries. In this corpus study run on the data available at CHILDES, we investigated whether natural languages provide a learner with reliable segmentation cues similar to the ones created artificially. We observed that in harmonic languages (child-directed speech to thirty-five Turkish and three Hungarian children), but not in non-harmonic ones (child-directed speech to one Farsi and four Polish children), harmonic vowel sequences are more likely to appear within words, and non-harmonic ones mostly appear across word boundaries, suggesting that natural harmonic languages provide a learner with regular cues that could potentially be used for word segmentation along with other cues.

Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago …, 2003

-lAr-marked nominals and three types of plurality in Turkish ... F. Nihan Ketrez University of So... more -lAr-marked nominals and three types of plurality in Turkish ... F. Nihan Ketrez University of Southern California ... 1 -lAr-marked nominals The morpheme lAr1 has traditionally been analyzed as the plural marker in Turkish (Lewis 1968, Underhill 1976, Kornfilt 1997, among others). In ...

Unpublished masters thesis, Bogaziçi University, …, 1999

Table of Contents .................................................................................. more Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. 3 Abbreviations..................................................................................... ... ... 5.2. Voice alternations....... .......................................................................................... 97 5.2.1. Passive........................................ ...

Natural Language Semantics, 2020

In English and many other languages, the interpretation of the plural is associated with an ‘excl... more In English and many other languages, the interpretation of the plural is associated with an ‘exclusive’ reading in positive sentences and an ‘inclusive’ reading in negative ones. For example, the plural noun tulips in a sentence such as Chicken planted tulips suggests that Chicken planted more than one tulip (i.e., a reading which ‘excludes’ atomic individual tulips). At the same time, however, the corresponding negative sentence Chicken didn’t plant tulips doesn’t merely convey that he didn’t plant more than one tulip, but rather that he didn’t plant any tulip (i.e., ‘including’ atomic individual tulips). Different approaches to the meaning contribution of the English plural vary in how they account for this alternation across the polarities, but converge on assuming that (at least one of) the denotation(s) of the plural should include atomic individuals. Turkish, on the other hand, is cited as one of the few known languages in which the plural only receives an exclusive interpreta...

Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 2006

What can be frustrating about the DVD in the classroom, however, is that the video scenes cannot ... more What can be frustrating about the DVD in the classroom, however, is that the video scenes cannot be rewound incrementally, and thus the teacher cannot re-play just a sentence or two several times in quick succession. While I was assured by Georgetown University Press that this problem has been fixed in copies of the book issued in Fall 2005, I have not been able to detect any difference in this problem between my "old" DVDs (from Fall 2004) and the "newer" 2005 DVDs. That minor headache aside, one of the biggest concerns for an instructor when dealing with a new edition of a textbook is the concern that the basic subject matter will have been reorganized enough to force the teacher into a major, time-consuming overhaul of all of his or her already-prepared materials. Thankfully, for the most part, such is not the case with this new edition of al-Kitaab. It is true, for example, that the dual has been taken out of Chapter 15 and moved to Chapter 18, but this type of change is relatively rare. What has been done, to the benefit of the instructor, is that more drills and activities have been worked into the text, giving students more practice in the skills being presented. A particularly nice addition has been a form of reading exercise featuring very short newspaper articles. Given the brevity of the article, my students seem much less overwhelmed by the sheer amount of unfamiliar words that they are being asked to skim over, and I have found that they are often more willing to engage in trying to make sense of the text. Another very kind touch this time around is the publication of an accompanying answer key, which should speed up the grading of the book's more "mechanical" grammar exercises. In the end, my major complaint about this new edition of al-Kitaab is simply, perhaps, that it contains an embarrassment of riches. With all the new features that have been added, I am finding ir difficult to get through as much of the book as quickly as I could before. And while I understand that the authors place their emphasis on the mastery of skills rather than on completion of a set number of chapters, nevertheless, it is nice to be able to show some sign of progress by the end of the year. But perhaps we shall all simply have to adjust our expectations, and enjoy a more leisurely route through al-Kitaab—one that includes enough time to listen to the nightingale, Abd al-Halim, when he sings! Nancy Coffin Princeton University

In an experimental task with novel words, we find that some lexical statistical regularities of T... more In an experimental task with novel words, we find that some lexical statistical regularities of Turkish phonotactics are productively extended in nonce words, while others are not. In particular, while laryngeal alternation rates in the lexicon can be predicted by the place of articulation of the stem-final stop, by word-length, and by the preceding vowel quality, this laryngeal alternation is only productively conditioned by place of articulation and word-length. Speakers ’ responses in a novel word task demonstrate that although they are attuned to the place of articulation and size effects, they ignore preceding vowels, even though the lexicon contains this information in abundance. We interpret this finding as evidence that speakers distinguish between phonologically motivated generalizations and accidental generalizations. We propose that universal grammar (UG), a set of analytic biases, acts as a filter on the generalizations that humans can make: UG contains information about...

Across languages, plural marking on a noun typically conveys that there is more than one entity i... more Across languages, plural marking on a noun typically conveys that there is more than one entity in the denotation of the noun. In English, this ‘more than one’ meaning is generally regarded as an implicature on top of a ‘semantically unmarked’/number-neutral literal meaning of the plural noun ([10, 18, 20]; see also [5, 12]). In Turkish, however, it is controversial whether plural nouns should be analysed as number-neutral or whether they should directly denote strict plurality [2, 19, 6]. This debate is important as it can shed light on the meanings number marking can have across languages, thereby constraining cross-linguistically adequate theories of the semantics of number. We tested Turkishspeaking adults and 4–6-year-old children on the interpretation of plurals in upwardand downward-entailing contexts, as compared to the ‘not all’ scalar inference of bazı ‘some’. The results of our experiment support a theory of plural nouns which includes a numberneutral interpretation.

Journal of Child Language

Children's early vocabulary shows sex differences – with boys having smaller vocabularies tha... more Children's early vocabulary shows sex differences – with boys having smaller vocabularies than age-comparable girls – a pattern that becomes evident in both singletons and twins. Twins also use fewer words than their singleton peers. However, we know relatively less about sex differences in early gesturing in singletons or twins, and also how singletons and twins might differ in their early gesture use. We examine the patterns of speech and gesture production of singleton and twin children, ages 0;10-to-3;4, during structured parent-child play. Boys and girls – singleton or twin – were similar in speech and gesture production, but singletons used a greater amount and diversity of speech and gestures than twins. There was no effect of twin dyad type (boy-boy, girl-girl, boy-girl) on either speech or gesture production. These results confirm earlier research showing close integration between gesture and speech in singletons in early language development, and further extend these p...

Taikomoji kalbotyra, Dec 28, 2023

BUCLA8, 2023

Languages 8(4), 2023

Journal of Child Language, 2022

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 2021

WECOL 2004, 2006

Languages

Antwerp Papers in …, 2007

Journal of Child Language, 2021

Journal of Child Language, 2013

Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago …, 2003

Unpublished masters thesis, Bogaziçi University, …, 1999

Natural Language Semantics, 2020

Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 2006

Journal of Child Language

Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 2016

Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 2017

Trends in language acquisition research, Jul 15, 2017

Language development is driven by multiple factors involving both the individual child and the en... more Language development is driven by multiple factors involving both the individual child and the environments that surround the child. The chapters in this volume highlight several such factors as potential contributors to developmental change, including factors that examine the role of immediate social environment (i.e., parent SES, parent and sibling input, peer interaction) and factors that focus on the child's own cognitive and social development, such as the acquisition of theory of mind, event knowledge, and memory. The discussion of the different factors is presented largely from a crosslinguistic framework, using a multimodal perspective (speech, gesture, sign). The book celebrates the scholarly contributions of Prof. Ayhan Aksu-Koc - a pioneer in the study of crosslinguistic variation in language acquisition, particularly in the domain of evidentiality and theory of mind. This book will serve as an important resource for researchers in the field of developmental psychology, cognitive science, and linguistics across the globe.

Cambridge University Press, May 17, 2012

A Student Grammar of Turkish is a concise introduction to Turkish grammar, designed specifically ... more A Student Grammar of Turkish is a concise introduction to Turkish grammar, designed specifically for English-speaking students and professionals. Written with the needs of the learner very much in mind, it sets out the grammar of the language in a clear and jargon-free style. The book not only explains the fundamentals of the grammar, but also tests students' understanding in an interactive way with more than 200 exercises. Key grammar points are summarised in tables and there are numerous illustrative examples. A list of grammatical terms used in the book and a key to all the exercises are also provided. This essential grammar and exercise book can be used as a supplement for students studying the language, with a dual function as a reference guide to look up grammar points, and as a resource from which exercises can be set and language skills practised.

A Student Grammar of Turkish, 2012

- mAktA and - DIr are not tense markers but they immediately follow the chapters on tense so that... more - mAktA and - DIr are not tense markers but they immediately follow the chapters on tense so that they can be discussed in relation to the tense markers. - DIr can be attached to nouns and verbs and expresses two meanings. One is fact ( gercek ). The other one is guess ( tahmin ). We can attribute these meanings to the sentences depending on their context of utterance. In some cases, when the context is not known, the sentences can be ambiguous. For example, Turkiye'nin baskenti Ankara'dir can mean ‘I guess, it is Ankara.’ Or it can mean ‘It is a well-known fact that it is Ankara.’ Now look at these sentences: Tavuk iki ayakli bir hayvandir. Dunya yuvarlaktir. We know that a chicken has two legs, so we can easily say that - DIr in these sentences expresses a fact . But if we were talking about an animal that we were not that familiar with, we could have the guess interpretation as well. The same is true for the other sentence. Due to our knowledge about the physical properties of the earth, we know that the sentence expresses a fact. If we were talking about a planet that we were not familiar with, the same sentence could have had a guess interpretation.

A Student Grammar of Turkish, 2012

Bu çalışmanın amacı Türkçe konuşma dilindeki ünlülerin yan yana bulunma sıklıklarının ünlü uyumu ... more Bu çalışmanın amacı Türkçe konuşma dilindeki ünlülerin yan yana bulunma sıklıklarının ünlü uyumu ile ilişkisini ve Türkçe sözcük sınırlarını tanımlamada ne kadar etkili olduğunu belirlemektir. Ünlü uyumuna uygun ünlü sıralarının kontrollü testlerde tercih edildiği Yavaş (1980) ve Zimmer ve Küntay (2003) tarafından tespit edilmiştir. Bu çalışmalarda bazı katılımcıların ünlü uyumuna uymayan bazı ünlü sıralarını da tercih ettikleri gözlemlenmiş ve bu ‘şaşırtıcı’ sonuç ünlü sıralarının konuşma dilindeki kullanım sıklığına bağlanmıştır. Ancak bu ilişki sadece bir kanı olarak ortaya atılmış, ispat edilmeden bırakılmıştır. Bu çalışma önceki çalışmaları tamamlamak amacıyla yapılmış, kontrollü testlerden alınan sonuçlar ile, Türkçe konuşma dilindeki sıklıkları karşılaştırmıştır.
Türkçe konuşma dilindeki eğilimleri temsil etmek için Ketrez (2014) tarafından yapılan çalışmada sunulan aa, ei, ui gibi ünlü ikililerinin sözcük içinde yanyana kullanım sıklıkları kullanılmıştır. Türkçe’yi ana dili olarak konuşan katılımcıların sözcük anlayışını belirlemek için, Zimmer ve Küntay (2003) çalışmasında olduğu gibi, kendilerinden s_vit ya da sev_t vb. bir ünlüsü eksik iki heceli anlamsız sözcükleri boşluğa bir ünlü yerleştirerek tamamlamaları ve Türkçe olabilecek sözcükler oluşturmaları istenmiştir. Katılımcıların başka bir dilin etkisinde olmalarını engellemek için bu çalışmada sadece tek dilli katılımcılar yer almışlardır. Önceki çalışmalarda olduğu gibi katılımcıların (i) çoğunlukla ünlü uyumuna uygun sözcükler oluşturdukları, (ii) ünlü uyumuna uygun olmayan sözcükleri de tercih edebildikleri, gözlemlenmiştir. Ünlü uyumuna uygun olmayan sözcüklerde ortaya çıkan ikili ünlü gruplarının tercih sıklıkları (ae, io vb.), bu seslerin konuşma dilindeki sıklıkları ile karşılaştırıldığında, belirleyici bir korelasyon olduğu gözlemlenmiştir. Bu korelasyon hem ünlü uyumuna uygun olan ve olmayan sözcüklere birlikte bakıldığında hem de sadece ünlü uyumuna uygun olmayanlara bakıldığında ortaya çıkmıştır. Yavaş (1980) ve Zimmer ve Küntay (2003) çalışmalarında önerilen ilişki desteklenmiştir.

Bu çalışmada düşük doğum kilosu ile doğan çocukların iki yaşındaki anadili gelişimleri normal doğ... more Bu çalışmada düşük doğum kilosu ile doğan çocukların iki yaşındaki anadili gelişimleri normal doğum kilosu aralığında doğan akranlarıyla karşılaştırılmakta, iki grubun özellikle sözcük ve sözce uzunluğu bakımından farklı olup olmadıkları araştırılmaktadır. Başka diller üzerine yapılan bazı çalışmalar düşük doğum kilosunun ve erken doğumun dil gelişimini olumsuz yönde etkilendiğini gösterirken bazıları da doğum kilosunun dil gelişimini etkileyen bir faktör olmadığını savunmaktadır. Bu konuda Türkçe gibi çok ekli bir dilin gelişimi üzerine bir çalışma daha önce yapılmamıştır. Bu çalışmada 10 düşük doğum kilosu ile doğan çocuğun iki yaşındaki biçimbirimsel gelişimlerinden birer kesit alınarak 10 normal kiloda doğan çocuğun gelişimi ile karşılaştırılmıştır. Düşük kiloda doğan çocukların ek ekleme konusunda geri kalmadıkları, dolayısıyla ortalama sözcük uzunluğu bakımından farklı olmadıkları, ancak ortalama sözce uzunluğu açısından farklılık gösterdikleri daha az sözcük kullanarak ve daha kısa sözceler oluşturarak konuştukları tespit edilmiştir. Bu çalışma doğum kilosunun dilin bazı alanlarını etkilediğini bazılarında ise önemli bir etkiye sahip olmadığını göstermektedir.

Studies in Turkish linguistics: …, 2003

Distributional Properties of Nouns and Verbs in Turkish Child-directed Speech* F. Nihan Ketrez Un... more Distributional Properties of Nouns and Verbs in Turkish Child-directed Speech* F. Nihan Ketrez University of Southern California ketrez@usc.edu This study investigates the distribution of nouns and verbs in Turkish child-directed speech. The goal of the study is to determine whether ...

The acquisition of diminutives: a cross- …, 2007

CHAPTER 11 The (scarcity of) diminutives in Turkish child language* F. Nihan Ketrez and Ayhan Aks... more CHAPTER 11 The (scarcity of) diminutives in Turkish child language* F. Nihan Ketrez and Ayhan Aksu-Ko^: This study reports that diminutive morphology is not one ot the early acquisitions in Turkish child speech (1; 3-2; 0), although the language has a number of productive ...

Development of Noun Inflection in …, 2009

... Suffixes undergo vowel or/and consonant harmony as shown in (1). Page 2. 16 F. Nihan Ketrez a... more ... Suffixes undergo vowel or/and consonant harmony as shown in (1). Page 2. 16 F. Nihan Ketrez and Ayhan Aksu-Koç (1) Lemma kedi &amp;amp;#x27;cat&amp;amp;#x27; ben &amp;amp;#x27;I ... So the forms listed in (1) above can also be expressed by kedi ile &amp;amp;#x27;with cat&amp;amp;#x27; and benim ile &amp;amp;#x27;with me&amp;amp;#x27; (instead of kediyle and benimle). ...

MIT working papers in linguistics, 2009

A Student Grammar of Turkish, 2012

Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 2007

This study reports that diminutive morphology is not one of the early acquisitions in Turkish chi... more This study reports that diminutive morphology is not one of the early acquisitions in Turkish child speech (1;3–2;0), although the language has a number of productive diminutive morphemes. Similarly the use of hypocoristic forms of nouns is not a typical property of Turkish child speech. We attribute the scarcity of diminutives and hypocoristic forms in child speech to their infrequent use in the input speech and the complexity of the diminutive formation in the language which does not have properties that could facilitate word learning.

Studies in Language Companion Series

Göksel, Aslı/Kerslake, Celia (Hgg.) Studies on Turkish …, 1998

Language acquisition & language disorders, 2017

Nominal Compound Acquisition, Oct 25, 2017

Languages differ with respect to their word formation tendencies and children’s first language ac... more Languages differ with respect to their word formation tendencies and children’s first language acquisition patterns reflect the dominant word formation options in their language starting at a very early age. Universal tendencies (e.g., preferences due to transparency and regularity of morphological structures) interact with language specific features to a certain extent. This chapter reviews the findings on Turkish speaking children’s acquisition of derivational morphology versus compounds and shows that Turkish displays properties of both. It further provides a discussion of what can be considered derivational as opposed to inflectional in Turkish, as there seems to be disagreements in the literature which are reflected in the language acquisition analyses, having a potential impact on the interpretation of the results.

Studies in language companion series, Jun 13, 2016

This study examines the acquisition of irregular morpho-phonological alternations (word final k-O... more This study examines the acquisition of irregular morpho-phonological alternations (word final k-O, p-b , t-d , and c-c alternations) by two different populations of Turkish speaking children, twins vs. singletons around age 3;0. The results, based on an elicited production test, suggest that relatively more regular and more frequent alternations ( k-O alternation) are acquired earlier and children, like adults, are sensitive to word length in their alternations. Twins follow the same pattern but with a slower pace. Twins’ delay is attributed to their exposure to each other’s erroraneous speech, which is not a regular experience that one can observe in a singleton home.