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Person and Number Hierarchy In Turkish: A Processing-Based Approach

Year 2021, Issue: 24, 409 - 440, 20.10.2021
https://doi.org/10.30767/diledeara.1011948

Abstract

In the literature, studies have suggested a hierarchical structure in the form of 1st P(erson)> 2nd P(erson), 2nd P > 1st P, 1st P = 2nd P for the person features in the language descriptions by taking the level of speech participation of person features into account. This study aimed to determine whether there is a person hierarchy in the form of 1st P > 2nd P or 2nd P > 1st P and a number hierarchy in the form of plural> singular or singular> plural in the processing of person and number features in Turkish subject DPs and IP heads. For this purpose, the Event-Related Potentials (ERP) were collected. The results show hierarchical structuring in the form of 2nd P > 1st P in terms of person features in the subject DP while structuring in the form of 1st P = 2nd P in the IP head. In terms of the number feature, no hierarchical structuring between singularity and plurality was found in either the subject DP or the IP head. The reason why this effect on person features in the IP head contrasts with the subject DP is considered to result from both the interpretability of the features in the subject DP and being equipped with D-features. The reason for the hierarchy in the subject DP to be 2nd P > 1st P is thought to stem from the fact that in the presentation of the first and second person in speech participant phrase, the [receiver] feature is presented in the second person, while the [speaker] is not presented in the first person, and the second person is more pronounced than the first person. It is thought that the reason why there is no difference in the number features is that the Number feature is uninterpretable in the IP head, as well as being a weak feature in the subject DP.

References

  • Aygüneş, M. (2013), “Türkçede uyum özelliklerinin Olaya İlişkin Beyin Potansiyelleri (OİP) çerçevesinde incelenmesi, Unpublished PhD dissertation. Ankara University.
  • Aygüneş, M., Kaşıkçı, I., Aydın, Ö., Demiralp, T. (2021), “The processing of person and number features in Turkish: An event related potentials (ERP) study”, Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi, 32/1, p. 31-52.
  • Benveniste, E. (1966), Problèmes de linguistique generale, Paris: Gallimard.
  • Bianchi, V. (2006), “On the syntax of personal arguments”, Lingua, 116 (12), p. 2023-2067.
  • Bornkessel, I., Mcelree, B., Schlesewsky, M. &Friederici, A.D. (2004), “Multidimensional contribution to garden-path strength: Dissociating phrase structure fromcase marking”, Journal of Memory and Language, 51, p. 495–522.
  • Bornkessel, I., Schlesewsky, M., and Friederici, A. D. (2002), “Grammar overrides frequency: Evidence from the online processing of flexible word order”, Cognition, 85(2), p. B21-B30.
  • Carreiras, M., Salillas, E., and Barber, H. A. (2004). Event-related potentials elicited during parsing of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish. Cognitive Brain Research, 20(1), 98-105.
  • Carminati, M.N. (2005), “Processing reflexes of hierarchy (person>number>gender) and implications for linguistic theory”, Lingua,115, p. 259–285.
  • Chiat, S. (1978), The analysis of children’s pronouns: An investigation into the prerequisites for linguistic knowledge. Yayımlanmamış doktora tezi. University of London.
  • Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
  • Chomsky, N. (2000), “Minimalist inquiries: The framework”. Roger Martin, David Michaels, & Juan Uriagereka (Ed.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, Cambridge : MA: MIT Press p. 89-155
  • Choudhary, K., Schlesewsky, M., Roehm, D., ve Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I. (2009), “The N400 as a correlate of interpretively-relevant linguistic rules: Evidence from Hindi”, Neuropsychologia, 47, p. 3012-3022.
  • Clark, E.V. (1985), “The acquisition of Romance, with special reference to French. D. Slobin” (In.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, (pp. 687–782) Ed Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Feuer, H. (1980), “Morphological development in Mohawk”, Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 18, p. 25-42.
  • Friederici, A.D., Ruschemeyer, S.A., Hahne, A., and Fiebach, C.J. (2003), “The role of left inferior frontal and superior temporal cortex in sentence comprehension: localizing syntactic and semantic processes”, Cerebral Cortex 13, p. 170-177.
  • Frisch, S., and Schlesewsky, M. (2001), “The N400 indicates problems of thematic hierarchizing”, Neuroreport, 12, p. 3391–3394.
  • Fyndanis, V., Varlokosta, S., and Tsapkini, K. (2012), “Agrammatic production: Interpretable features and selective impairment in verb inflection”, Lingua, 122, p. 1134-1147.
  • Greenhouse, S., Geisser, S. (1959), “On methods in the analysis of profile data”, Psychonomics, 24, p. 95–112.
  • Harley, H. & Ritter, E. (2002), “Person and number in pronouns: A feature-geometric analysis”, Language, 78,(3), p. 482-526.
  • İnce, A., Aygen, &G., Aydın, Ö. (2012), Copular structures as (non)phases, The 16th International Conference on Turkish Linguistics, 18 September, 2012, ODTÜ, Ankara.
  • Jelinek, E. (2000), “Datives and argument hierarchies”, Andrew Carnie, Eloise Jelinek, ve Mary Willie (Ed.) Papers in Honor of Ken Hale. (pp.51-70) In. MIT Working Papers in Endangered and Less Familiar Languages.
  • Jurafsky, D. (1996), “A probabilistic model of lexical and syntactic access and disambiguation”, Cognitive Science, 20, p. 137–194.
  • Kaan, E., Harris, A., Gibson, E., and Holcomb, P.J. (2000). The P600 as an index of syntactic integration difficulty. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15,(2), 159-201.
  • Kaan, E. and Swaab, T. Y. (2003). Repair, revision, and complexity in syntactic analysis: An electrophysiological differentiation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15,(1), 98-110.
  • Kutas, M., and Hillyard, S. A. (1980a), “Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity”, Science, 207, p. 203–205.
  • Kutas, M., and Hillyard, S. A. (1980b), “Reading between the lines: Event-related brain potentials during natural speech processing”, Brain and Language, 11, p. 354–273.
  • Mancini, S., Molinaro, N., Rizzi, L. & Carreiras, M. (2011a), “A person is not a number: Discourse involvement in subject–verb agreement computation”, Brain Research, 1412 (2), p. 64-76.
  • Mancini, S., Molinaro, N., Rizzi, L. & Carreiras, M. (2011b), “When persons disagree: An ERP study of unagreement in Spanish”, Psychophysiology, 48 (10), p. 1361-1371.
  • Mancini, S., Postiglione, F., Laudanna, A. & Rizzi, L. (2014), “On the person-number distinction: Subject-verb agreement processing in Italian”, Lingua, 146, p. 28-38.
  • McGinnis, M. (2005), “On markedness asymmetries in person and number”, Langauge 8 (3), p. 699-718.
  • Nanousi, V., Masterson, J., Druks, J., & Atkinson, M. (2006), “Interpretable vs. uninterpretable features: Evidence from six Greek-speaking agrammatic patients”, Journal of Neurolinguistics, 19 (3), p. 209-238.
  • Nevins, A. (2011), “Multiple agree with clitics: Person complementarity vs. omnivorous number”, Natural Language ve Linguistic Theory, 29, p. 939-971.
  • Nevins, A., Dillon, B., Malhotra, S., & Phillips, C. (2007), “The role of feature-number and feature-type in processing Hindi verb agreement violations”, Brain Research, 1164, p. 81-94.
  • Nichols, l. (2001), “The syntactic basis of referential hierarchy phenomena: Clues from languages with and without morphological case”, Lingua, 111, p. 515-537.
  • Panagiotidis, P. (2002), Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns ‘pronominality’ and licensing in syntax. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  • Silverstein, M. (1985), “Hierarchy of features and ergativity”, Muysken, P., van Riemsdijk, H. (Ed.), Features and Projections, (pp. 163-232). In: Foris, Dordrecht.
  • Tsimpli, I.M. (2003), “Interrogatives in the Greek/English interlanguage: A minimalist account”, (Ed.) Mela-Athanasopoulou, E., Selected papers on theoretical and applied linguistics, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University, p. 214-225
  • Tsimpli, I.M. and Mastropavlou, M. (2007), “Feature interpretability in L2 acquisition and SLI: Greek clitics and determiners”, Liceras, J., Zobl, H. ve Goodluck, H. (Ed.), The role of formal features in second language acquisition. In. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • Wagers, M., Lau, E. and Phillips, C., (2009), “Agreement attraction in comprehension: representations and processes”, Journal of Memory and Language. 61 (2), p. 206-237.
  • Zawiszewski, A., Santesteban, M. & Laka, I. (2016), “Phi-features reloaded: An ERP study on person and number agreement processing”, Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(3), p. 601-626.

Türkçede Kişi ve Sayı Hiyerarşisi: İşlemleme Temelli Bir Yaklaşım

Year 2021, Issue: 24, 409 - 440, 20.10.2021
https://doi.org/10.30767/diledeara.1011948

Abstract

Alanyazında kişi özelliklerinin konuşma eylemine katılım düzeyini dikkate alarak dillerde yapılan betimlemelerde kişi özellikleri için 1.kişi > 2.kişi, 2.kişi > 1.kişi, 1.kişi = 2.Kişi biçiminde çeşitli hiyerarşik yapılanmaların önerildiği görülmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı; Türkçede Belirleyici Öbeğinde (BelÖ) ve Çekim Öbeğinin (ÇÖ) başında kişi ve sayı özelliklerinin işlemlenmesinde 1. kişi > 2.kişi ya da 2.kişi > 1.kişi biçiminde kişi hiyerarşisi ve Çoğul > Tekil ya da Tekil > Çoğul biçiminde bir sayı hiyerarşisi bulunup bulunmadığını Olaya İlişkin Beyin Potansiyelleri yöntemi ile belirlemektir. Çalışma sonucunda BelÖ’de kişi özellikleri açısından 2.kişi > 1.kişi biçiminde bir hiyerarşik yapılanma görülürken, ÇÖ başında 1.kişi = 2.kişi biçiminde bir yapılanma olduğu görülmüştür. Sayı özelliği açısından gerek BelÖ’de gerekse ÇÖ başında sayı kategorisinde tekillik ile çoğulluk arasında hiyerarşik bir yapılanmanın olmadığı görülmüştür. Kişi özelliklerinde ilgili etkinin ÇÖ’nün aksine BelÖ’de görülmesinin nedeni BelÖ’deki özelliklerin gerek yorumlanabilir olmasından, gerekse B-özelliklerle donatılı olmasından kaynaklandığı düşünülmektedir. BelÖ’deki hiyerarşinin 2. kişi > 1.kişi biçiminde olmasının nedeni olarak da katılımcı öbeği içerisinde yer alan birinci ve ikinci kişinin sunumunda, [alıcı] özelliğinin ikinci kişide sunulurken [konuşucu]’nun birinci kişide sunulmaması dolayısıyla ikinci kişinin birinci kişiye göre daha belirgin olmasından kaynaklandığı düşünülmektedir. Sayı özellikleri içerisinde fark oluşmamasının nedeninin Sayı özelliğinin ÇÖ başında yorumlanamaz olmasının yanı sıra BelÖ’de de zayıf bir özellik olmaları olduğu düşünülmektedir.

References

  • Aygüneş, M. (2013), “Türkçede uyum özelliklerinin Olaya İlişkin Beyin Potansiyelleri (OİP) çerçevesinde incelenmesi, Unpublished PhD dissertation. Ankara University.
  • Aygüneş, M., Kaşıkçı, I., Aydın, Ö., Demiralp, T. (2021), “The processing of person and number features in Turkish: An event related potentials (ERP) study”, Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi, 32/1, p. 31-52.
  • Benveniste, E. (1966), Problèmes de linguistique generale, Paris: Gallimard.
  • Bianchi, V. (2006), “On the syntax of personal arguments”, Lingua, 116 (12), p. 2023-2067.
  • Bornkessel, I., Mcelree, B., Schlesewsky, M. &Friederici, A.D. (2004), “Multidimensional contribution to garden-path strength: Dissociating phrase structure fromcase marking”, Journal of Memory and Language, 51, p. 495–522.
  • Bornkessel, I., Schlesewsky, M., and Friederici, A. D. (2002), “Grammar overrides frequency: Evidence from the online processing of flexible word order”, Cognition, 85(2), p. B21-B30.
  • Carreiras, M., Salillas, E., and Barber, H. A. (2004). Event-related potentials elicited during parsing of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish. Cognitive Brain Research, 20(1), 98-105.
  • Carminati, M.N. (2005), “Processing reflexes of hierarchy (person>number>gender) and implications for linguistic theory”, Lingua,115, p. 259–285.
  • Chiat, S. (1978), The analysis of children’s pronouns: An investigation into the prerequisites for linguistic knowledge. Yayımlanmamış doktora tezi. University of London.
  • Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
  • Chomsky, N. (2000), “Minimalist inquiries: The framework”. Roger Martin, David Michaels, & Juan Uriagereka (Ed.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, Cambridge : MA: MIT Press p. 89-155
  • Choudhary, K., Schlesewsky, M., Roehm, D., ve Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I. (2009), “The N400 as a correlate of interpretively-relevant linguistic rules: Evidence from Hindi”, Neuropsychologia, 47, p. 3012-3022.
  • Clark, E.V. (1985), “The acquisition of Romance, with special reference to French. D. Slobin” (In.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, (pp. 687–782) Ed Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Feuer, H. (1980), “Morphological development in Mohawk”, Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 18, p. 25-42.
  • Friederici, A.D., Ruschemeyer, S.A., Hahne, A., and Fiebach, C.J. (2003), “The role of left inferior frontal and superior temporal cortex in sentence comprehension: localizing syntactic and semantic processes”, Cerebral Cortex 13, p. 170-177.
  • Frisch, S., and Schlesewsky, M. (2001), “The N400 indicates problems of thematic hierarchizing”, Neuroreport, 12, p. 3391–3394.
  • Fyndanis, V., Varlokosta, S., and Tsapkini, K. (2012), “Agrammatic production: Interpretable features and selective impairment in verb inflection”, Lingua, 122, p. 1134-1147.
  • Greenhouse, S., Geisser, S. (1959), “On methods in the analysis of profile data”, Psychonomics, 24, p. 95–112.
  • Harley, H. & Ritter, E. (2002), “Person and number in pronouns: A feature-geometric analysis”, Language, 78,(3), p. 482-526.
  • İnce, A., Aygen, &G., Aydın, Ö. (2012), Copular structures as (non)phases, The 16th International Conference on Turkish Linguistics, 18 September, 2012, ODTÜ, Ankara.
  • Jelinek, E. (2000), “Datives and argument hierarchies”, Andrew Carnie, Eloise Jelinek, ve Mary Willie (Ed.) Papers in Honor of Ken Hale. (pp.51-70) In. MIT Working Papers in Endangered and Less Familiar Languages.
  • Jurafsky, D. (1996), “A probabilistic model of lexical and syntactic access and disambiguation”, Cognitive Science, 20, p. 137–194.
  • Kaan, E., Harris, A., Gibson, E., and Holcomb, P.J. (2000). The P600 as an index of syntactic integration difficulty. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15,(2), 159-201.
  • Kaan, E. and Swaab, T. Y. (2003). Repair, revision, and complexity in syntactic analysis: An electrophysiological differentiation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15,(1), 98-110.
  • Kutas, M., and Hillyard, S. A. (1980a), “Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity”, Science, 207, p. 203–205.
  • Kutas, M., and Hillyard, S. A. (1980b), “Reading between the lines: Event-related brain potentials during natural speech processing”, Brain and Language, 11, p. 354–273.
  • Mancini, S., Molinaro, N., Rizzi, L. & Carreiras, M. (2011a), “A person is not a number: Discourse involvement in subject–verb agreement computation”, Brain Research, 1412 (2), p. 64-76.
  • Mancini, S., Molinaro, N., Rizzi, L. & Carreiras, M. (2011b), “When persons disagree: An ERP study of unagreement in Spanish”, Psychophysiology, 48 (10), p. 1361-1371.
  • Mancini, S., Postiglione, F., Laudanna, A. & Rizzi, L. (2014), “On the person-number distinction: Subject-verb agreement processing in Italian”, Lingua, 146, p. 28-38.
  • McGinnis, M. (2005), “On markedness asymmetries in person and number”, Langauge 8 (3), p. 699-718.
  • Nanousi, V., Masterson, J., Druks, J., & Atkinson, M. (2006), “Interpretable vs. uninterpretable features: Evidence from six Greek-speaking agrammatic patients”, Journal of Neurolinguistics, 19 (3), p. 209-238.
  • Nevins, A. (2011), “Multiple agree with clitics: Person complementarity vs. omnivorous number”, Natural Language ve Linguistic Theory, 29, p. 939-971.
  • Nevins, A., Dillon, B., Malhotra, S., & Phillips, C. (2007), “The role of feature-number and feature-type in processing Hindi verb agreement violations”, Brain Research, 1164, p. 81-94.
  • Nichols, l. (2001), “The syntactic basis of referential hierarchy phenomena: Clues from languages with and without morphological case”, Lingua, 111, p. 515-537.
  • Panagiotidis, P. (2002), Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns ‘pronominality’ and licensing in syntax. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  • Silverstein, M. (1985), “Hierarchy of features and ergativity”, Muysken, P., van Riemsdijk, H. (Ed.), Features and Projections, (pp. 163-232). In: Foris, Dordrecht.
  • Tsimpli, I.M. (2003), “Interrogatives in the Greek/English interlanguage: A minimalist account”, (Ed.) Mela-Athanasopoulou, E., Selected papers on theoretical and applied linguistics, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University, p. 214-225
  • Tsimpli, I.M. and Mastropavlou, M. (2007), “Feature interpretability in L2 acquisition and SLI: Greek clitics and determiners”, Liceras, J., Zobl, H. ve Goodluck, H. (Ed.), The role of formal features in second language acquisition. In. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • Wagers, M., Lau, E. and Phillips, C., (2009), “Agreement attraction in comprehension: representations and processes”, Journal of Memory and Language. 61 (2), p. 206-237.
  • Zawiszewski, A., Santesteban, M. & Laka, I. (2016), “Phi-features reloaded: An ERP study on person and number agreement processing”, Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(3), p. 601-626.
There are 40 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language Turkish
Journal Section ARTİCLES
Authors

Mehmet Aygunes 0000-0002-0327-6905

Publication Date October 20, 2021
Acceptance Date October 18, 2021
Published in Issue Year 2021 Issue: 24

Cite

APA Aygunes, M. (2021). Türkçede Kişi ve Sayı Hiyerarşisi: İşlemleme Temelli Bir Yaklaşım. Dil Ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları(24), 409-440. https://doi.org/10.30767/diledeara.1011948

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