Lexical Associations in the L1 Turkish Mental Lexicon: Can L1 Lexical Intuition and a Representative Corpus Guide Teaching of Turkish as a Foreign Language Materials?

Abstract

Studies to date using corpus linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches have investigated the collocational links in both the L1 and L2 brain from different angles. They have attempted to test the role collocations play in the mental lexicon and question how corpus data can guide us in our investigations. However, there have been almost no attempts to explore the relationship between the L1 Turkish users’ subjective judgements of collocational use (frequency) and the association strength of collocational items in Turkish evidenced in representative corpora. This research, mainly with a corpuslinguistic approach, aims to (a) detect the possible relationship between the collocational links in the L1 Turkish mental lexicon and the collocational frequency profiles on the TNC (Turkish National Corpus) (b) and thus question if L1 speaker intuitions (familiarity) regarding collocational frequency and the frequency profiles of the items, as evidenced through representative corpora, can/should be exploited in an attempt to create target vocabulary lists or vocabulary teaching materials for teaching Turkish as a foreign language. The results indicate that the collocational links in L1 Turkish users’ mental lexicon seem to resemble the lexical associations represented in the TNC. To be more precise, higher Delta-P (1 > word 2) scores are associated with stronger collocational intuitions. Additionally, the Delta-P (1 > word 2) as well as the CEFR1 level are significant predictors of subjective judgements for frequent collocational use. The results have been discussed in light of the psycholinguistic research highlighting collocational processing, and some pedagogical conclusions have been drawn.

Keywords

• Collocation
• Frequency
• Intuition
• L1 Turkish
• L2 Turkish Teaching

References

1. Aksan, Y., Aksan, M., Koltuksuz, A., Sezer, T., Mersinli, Ü., Demirhan, U., ...Kurtoglu, Ö. (2012). Construction of the Turkish National Corpus (TNC). In N.Calzolari, K. Choukri, T. Declerck, M. U. Doğan, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, ... S.Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (pp. 3223–3226). Istanbul, Turkiye: European LanguageResources Association. Retrieved from https://www.tnc.org.tr
2. Baayen, R.H., Milin, P., & Ramscar, M. (2016). Frequency in lexical processing. Aphasiology 30, 1174–1220. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 02687038.2016.1147767
3. Bölükbaş Kaya, F., & Yılmaz, M. Y. (Ed.). (2020). Yeni İstanbul uluslararası öğrenciler için Türkçe öğretim seti [New Istanbul Turkish for international students course book]. Istanbul, Turkiye: Kültür Sanat Basımevi.
4. Brysbaert, M., Mandera, P., & Keuleers, E. (2018). The word frequency effect in word processing: An updated review. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(1), 45–50.
5. Cangır, H., Büyükkantarcıoğlu, S. N., & Durrant, P. (2017). Investigating collocational priming in Turkish. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 13(132), 465–486.
6. Cangır, H. (2018). Investigating the relationship between L1 and L2 collocational processing in the bilingual mental lexicon (Doctoral dissertation, Hacettepe University). Retrieved from http://www.openaccess. hacettepe.edu.tr:8080/xmlui/handle/11655/4986
7. Cangır, H., & Durrant. P. (2021). Collocational networks in the L1 Turkish-L2 English mental lexicon. Lingua, 258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2021.103057
8. Cangır, H. (2021). Objective and subjective frequency. Pedagogical Linguistics, 2(1), 64–91.

9. Council of Europe (1996). The Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching and assessment. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source /Framework_EN.pdf. Accessed 1 February 2021.
10. Chen, X. & Dong, Y. (2019). Evaluating objective and subjective frequency measures in L2 lexical processing. Lingua, 230, 102738. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2019.102738
11. Christiansen, M. H., Conway, C. M., & Curtin, S. (2005). Multiple-cue integration in language acquisition: A connectionist model of speech segmentation and rule-like behavior. In J.W. Minett & W.S.-Y. Wang (Eds.), Language acquisition, change and emergence: Essays in evolutionary linguistics (pp. 205-249). Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press.
12. Christiansen, M. H., & Arnon, I. (2017). More than words: The role of multiword sequences in language learning and use. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12274
13. Church, K. W., & Hanks, P. (1990). Word association norms, mutual information, and lexicography. Computational Linguistics, 16(1), 22–29.
14. Çelik, S. (2011). Developing collocational competence through web based concordance activities. Novitas- ROYAL (Research on Youth and Language), 5(2). Retrieved from https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/novroy/ issue/10814/130373
15. Durrant, P., & Doherty, A. (2010). Are high-frequency collocations psychologically real? Investigating the thesis of collocational priming. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 6(2), 125--155.
16. Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 143–188. https:// doi.org/10.1017/S0272263102002024
17. Ellis, N. C., Simpson-Vlach, R., Römer, U., Brook O’Donnell, M., & Wulff, S. (2015). Learner corpora and formulaic language in second language acquisition research. Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research, 357–378. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139649414.016
18. Gablasova, D., Brezina, V., & McEnery, T. (2017). Collocations in corpus-based language learning research: Identifying, comparing, and interpreting the evidence. Language Learning. 67(1), 155–179. https://doi. org/10.1111/lang.12225
19. González Fernández, B., & Schmitt, N. (2015). How much collocation knowledge do L2 learners have? The effects of frequency and amount of exposure. ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 166, 94–126.
20. Göymen, D., & Aygüneş, M. (2020). The processing of speech formulas on Turkish: A masked priming study. Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi, 31(2), 207-230.
21. Gries, S. T. (2013). 50-something years of work on collocations: What is or should be next ... International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 18(1), 137–166. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.18.1.09gri
22. Herbst, T. (1996). What are collocations: sandy beeches or false teeth? English Studies, 77(4), 379-393.
23. Hoey, M. (2005). Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9780203327630
24. The jamovi project (2021). jamovi (Version 1.6) [Computer Software]. Retrieved from https://www.jamovi.org
25. Jones, M., & Durrant, P. (2010). What can a corpus tell us about vocabulary teaching materials? In M. McCarthy and A. O’Keeffe (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics: London: Routledge: 387–400. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203856949‑28
26. Karadağ, B. M. (2020). Yabancılara Türkçe öğretiminde eşdizimlilik: Bir model önerisi. Journal of Linguistics, 34, 27–56. https://doi.org/10.26650/jol.2020.003
27. Kemmer, S., & Barlow, M. (2000). Introduction: A usage-based conception of language. In Barlow, M. & Kemmer, S. (Eds.), Usage-based models of language (pp. vii–xxviii). Stanford, CA: CSLI
28. Lewis, M. (1993). The Lexical Approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.
29. Myers, R. (1990). Classical and modern regression with applications (2 ed.). Duxbury, Boston.
30. Öksüz, D., Brezina, V., & Rebuschat, P. (2021). Collocational processing in L1 and L2: The effects of word frequency, collocational frequency, and association. Language Learning, 71(1), 55–98. https://doi. org/10.1111/lang.12427
31. Öksüz, D. C. (2019). Collocational processing in typologically different languages, English and Turkish: Evidence from corpora and psycholinguistic experimentation (Doctoral dissertation). Lancaster University Retrieved from https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/139672
32. R Core Team (2021). R: A Language and environment for statistical computing. (Version 4.0) [Computer software]. Retrieved from https://cran.r-project.org. (R packages retrieved from MRAN snapshot 2021-04-01).
33. Rebuschat, P., & Williams, J. N. (Eds.). (2012). Statistical learning and language acquisition. Berlin: deGruyter Mouton.
34. Schmitt, N., & Dunham, B. (1999). Exploring native and non-native intuitions of word frequency. Second Language Research, 15, 389–411.
35. Schmitt, N. (2010). Researching vocabulary: A vocabulary research manual. London, UK: Palgrave Press.
36. Scott, T. (2019). Learning language in chunks. Part of the Cambridge Papers in ELT series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37. Siyanova, A., & Schmitt, N. (2008). L2 learner production and processing of collocation: A multi-study perspective. Canadian Modern Language Review, 64, 429–458. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.64.3.429
38. Siyanova-Chanturia, A., & Spina, S. (2015). Investigation of native speaker and second language learner intuition of collocation frequency. Language Learning, 65(3), 533–562. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12125
39. Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
40. Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.