Acquisition of lexicon in Turkish

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to present a detailtnl description of the lexicon acquired between the ages of 2;0 and 3;6` by four- Turkish children» The specific purposes are to find out. 1) the number of words each ehildi- en acquire, 2) word-forming devices Turkish children utilise in order to enrich their vocabulary, 3) the reason for their preference for one word-forming device over another, and to investiqate 4) if children cominq from low and middle s o c i o - e c o n o m i c b a c k g r o u n d s s h o w a i f f e r e n c es i n t h e amount of words they acquire and in the choice of word-formation devices. It has been found out that s:t art i nq from very early ages, the subjects are able to produce words of different types. While they are acquiring new, words they also m at ster word- ma king devices: mainly derivation and compounding» They adopt suffixes that are also productively used by adults in their productions. However, the subjects from the low socio-economic group lag behind the subjects from the middle socio-economic qroup in regard for the number of total vocabulary acquired and in the product i v i t.y of war d- format ı on `' In C h a p t e r 0 n e, t h e p u r p o s e o f t h e s 1 1. t d y, t h e r ese a re h questions, operational definitions and the scope are presented. Related literature on the development of language, word- formation, and word groups in Turkish is reviewed in Chapter Two,.Chapter Three provides a definition of the research design, the subjects, field procedure, and the data collection. The findings are presented and discussed in Chapter Four. Conclusions drawn from the evaluation of the data and implications for further research are stated in Chapter Five. 1 1