Testing the interface hypothesis: L2 acquisition of English subjects and articles by Turkish learners

Download

index.pdf

Date

2020

Author

Geydir, Ecem

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

424
views

263
downloads

This thesis aims to expand the testing grounds of the Interface Hypothesis (IH) by investigating the acquisition of English subjects operating with pure syntax and article uses of (in)definiteness and genericity in English governed with external and internal interfaces respectively by L1-Turkish learners. Fifty-eight sophomore students who have been studying in the Department of Foreign Language Education of a state university in central Turkey were asked to complete a Grammaticality Judgement, a Discourse Completion and a Forced-Choice Elicitation Task subsequently. By doing so, the aim was to understand whether proficient Turkish learners of English interpret and use subjects and articles accurately in English and whether the IH can account for the results. To this end, upon analyzing the data, the relationship between the participants’ performances were discussed in relation to the IH. The findings highlighted that narrow syntactic properties are acquired with the least difficulty. The properties at an interface domain, on the other hand, present more difficulty regardless of the type of the interface. Additionally, the IH was found partially accountable for the participants’ performances. It could explain why the participants have done significantly better in subject realization than the articles, whereas it could not account for the lack of statistically significant difference between the (in)definite and generic uses of articles. To build upon the present study, adding tasks measuring language processing might be of great value to gain a better understanding into the reason why more errors are committed when interface structures are involved.

Subject Keywords

Grammar, Comparative and general, Grammar, Comparative and general Syntax., Keywords: Pure Syntax, Internal, External, Interface.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12625496/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/45735

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Processing of conditional constructions in Turkish l2 speakers of English Evcen, Ebru; Özge, Duygu; Department of English Language Teaching (2019) This thesis aims to examine whether Turkish L2 learners of English process conditional constructions in an incremental and/or predictive manner. An offline grammaticality judgment (GJT) task was devised to test L2 learners’ sensitivity to grammatical violations and an online self-paced reading (SPR) task was designed to find out whether processing patterns of L2 learners would match existing L2 processing accounts. We manipulated the Connector Type (unless, unless…not, if…not) and Context Type (congruent, i...
The Morphological processing of derived words in L1 Turkish and L2 English / Gacan, Pınar; Kırkıcı, Bilal; Department of English Literature (2014) The primary goal of this thesis was to investigate the L1 and L2 processing of morphologically complex words by making use of psycholinguistic experimental techniques. Specifically, the question to be answered in the present study was how native speakers of Turkish process morphologically complex (derivational) word forms in L1 Turkish and in L2 English. It was also aimed at investigating the potential developmental similarities and/or differences between different L2 groups at distinct proficiency levels. ...
An Experimental study on acquisition of prepositions in English as a third language Çabuk, Sakine; Sağın Şimşek, Sultan Çiğdem; Gracanın Yüksek, Martına; Department of English Language Teaching (2016) This study explores the role of cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition process by examining English adpositions. Comprehension, processing and production of English prepositions (in, on, at, behind, over, to) were examined through off-line and on-line data collection tasks to find out which of the two known languages (L1 or L2) is the major source of cross-linguistic influence on the acquisition of English (L3) adpositions given the fact that adpositions are morphologically and syntactical...
A type system for combinatory categorial grammar Erkan, Güneş; Bozşahin, Hüseyin Cem; Department of Computer Engineering (2003) This thesis investigates the internal structure and the computational representation of the lexical entries in Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG). A restricted form of typed feature structures is proposed for representing CCG categories. This proposal is combined with a constraint-based modality system for basic categories of CCG. We present some linguistic evidence to explain why both a uni cation-based feature system and a constraint-based modality system are needed for a lexicalist framework. An implem...
The Second language processing of nominal compounds: a masked priming study Çelikkol Berk, Nurten; Kırkıcı, Bilal; Department of English Language Teaching (2018) The primary purpose of the present study was to understand the workings of the cognitive mechanisms underlying L2 morphological processing, and more particularly, to explore how noun-noun compounds in L2 English are processed by native speakers of Turkish in the earliest stages of word recognition. Furthermore, the study investigated the role of constituent morphemes in the processing of compound words and examined whether or not a compound word primes its first and second constituents equally. The final pu...

Citation Formats

E. Geydir, “Testing the interface hypothesis: L2 acquisition of English subjects and articles by Turkish learners,” Thesis (M.S.) -- Graduate School of Social Sciences. English Language Teaching., Middle East Technical University, 2020.