ERIC Number: EJ1270961
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Oct
Pages: 27
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0267-6583
EISSN: N/A
The Interpretation of Syntactically Unconstrained Anaphors in Turkish Heritage Speakers
Gracanin-Yuksek, Martina; Lago, Sol; Safak, Duygu Fatma; Demir, Orhan; Kirkici, Bilal
Second Language Research, v36 n4 p475-501 Oct 2020
Previous work has shown that heritage grammars are often simplified compared to their monolingual counterparts, especially in domains in which the societally-dominant language makes fewer distinctions than the heritage language. We investigated whether linguistic simplification extended to the anaphoric system of Turkish heritage speakers living in Germany. Whereas the Turkish monolingual grammar features a three-way distinction between reflexives ("kendi"), pronouns (o), and syntactically-unconstrained anaphors ("kendisi"), German only distinguishes between two categories, pronouns and reflexives. We examined whether heritage speakers simplified the Turkish anaphor system by assimilating the syntactically unconstrained anaphor "kendisi" to either of the two categories attested in the societally-dominant language, German. Speakers' sensitivity to grammatical distinctions in comprehension was assessed using an offline antecedent selection task and an online self-paced reading task. Our results showed that heritage speakers retain the three-way anaphoric distinctions of the monolingual grammar but there were also differences between the results of the offline and the online tasks. We suggest that processing paradigms are a useful complement to judgment tasks when studying how heritage speakers use grammatical distinctions involving optionality, as online measures can reveal distinctions that are allowed, even if dispreferred by comprehenders.
Descriptors: Grammar, Turkish, Native Language, Second Language Learning, German, Contrastive Linguistics, Task Analysis, Monolingualism, Syntax, Language Processing, Reading Processes, Decision Making, Language Usage, Cultural Background, Foreign Countries, Language Acquisition
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Germany
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A