Research Article

An investigation into translations of ablative case markers in Turkish: The case of international students in a state university

Number: 22 March 21, 2021
  • Rabia İrem Demirci *
  • Emrah Ekmekçi
TR EN

An investigation into translations of ablative case markers in Turkish: The case of international students in a state university

Abstract

Turkish is an agglutinative language in which agglutinations determine the meaning of sentences. For this reason, grammatical case suffixes play a significant role in constructing semantically proper sentences. In this regard, learners of Turkish as a foreign language are supposed to dwell on meanings of case markers rather than structures because case marking suffixes have lots of functions which cause the students to have problems regarding the proper use of suffixes. Studies indicate that proper use of case markers is one of the most problematic issues that learners of Turkish as a foreign language face. Therefore, learners of Turkish should be aware of the semantic richness of this language arising from case marking suffixes. The purpose of this study is to determine the errors in translations of ablative case markers of international students at Turkish Language Learning Research and Application Centre in a state university. As data collection tools, a background questionnaire and a translation task were used. In the background questionnaire, some personal information regarding students' native language, language choice in the translation task, and duration of learning Turkish was obtained. In the translation task, students were expected to translate the given sentences into one of the three languages: English, French or German, whichever they are good at, by taking ablative case markers into consideration. The study's findings revealed that students have considerable problems in figuring out the less frequently used functions of ablative case markers while translating the sentences from Turkish into the language that they chose.

Keywords

References

  1. Al Zoubi, S. (2018). The Impact of Exposure to English Language on Language Acquisition. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 5(4), 151-162.
  2. Aksan, D. (1979). Encountered some difficulties and mistakes by foreign people during learningTurkish. Hacettepe University Journal of the Faculty of Letters, 6(1-2), 259-261.
  3. Arhan, A. (2015). As Turkish language learners, Egyptian students' case affix errors in writing.(Master’s thesis, Başkent University, Ankara, Turkey). Retrieved from https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi
  4. Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry & research design: choosing among five approaches.Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
  5. Demirci, M., & Dinçaslan, M. F. (2016). The use of valence of Syrian students learning Turkish as aforeign language. Journal of Theory and Pratice in Education, 12(5), 1011-1040.
  6. Duman, G. B. (2013). Kırgızların Türkiye Türkçesi öğrenirken ad durum biçim birimleriyle ilgili yaptıkları hatalar ve çözüm önerileri [The errors of noun case suffixes Kyrgyz students make while learning Turkish language of Turkey and solutions to them]. Dil ve Edebiyat Eğitimi Dergisi, 2(5), 82-94.
  7. Emiroğlu, S. (2014). Türkçe Öğrenen Yabancı Öğrencilerin Yazılı Anlatımlarında Türkçenin Dil Bilgisi ve Yazım Özellikleriyle İlgili Karşılaştığı Zorluklar. International Journal of Language Academy, 2(3), 99-119.
  8. Gass, S. M., Selinker, L. (2001). Second Language Acquisition, an Introductory Course (2nd ed.).Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Linguistics

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Rabia İrem Demirci * This is me
0000-0002-8884-2899
Türkiye

Emrah Ekmekçi This is me
0000-0001-5585-8512
Türkiye

Publication Date

March 21, 2021

Submission Date

October 15, 2020

Acceptance Date

-

Published in Issue

Year 2021 Number: 22

APA
Demirci, R. İ., & Ekmekçi, E. (2021). An investigation into translations of ablative case markers in Turkish: The case of international students in a state university. RumeliDE Dil Ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 22, 934-947. https://doi.org/10.29000/rumelide.897225