Early verbs and the acquisition of Turkish argument structure

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the acquisition of early verbs and Turkish argument structure by four, monolingual Turkish children whose language development is studied longitudinally between the ages 1; 1,19 and 3;3,3. In the first part of the thesis, the early verbs produced by the subjects are described and the emergence of the Turkish verb as a syntactic category is discussed. The main claim in the study is that the subjects go through a developmental stage during which they provide hardly any evidence for the verb category in their speech. Morphological and syntactic evidence for the category start to appear by the age of 1;6-1;7 and its acquisition is completed by 2;0 years of age. The second part of the thesis concentrates on the development of the Turkish argument structure and discusses the acquisition of verbs with various argument frames within the theoretical framework of Prominence Theory proposed by Grimshaw (1992). Two major issues discussed in this part are the development of the syntax-semanticsmorphology interface and the role of the agent in the acquisition of argument structures. The study provides evidence for a semantically based acquisition of the argument structures underlining the importance of the role of the agent in children's early grammar.