Τhe Turkish Nominal Syntagmatic Sets 'Ad tamlaması': A Linguistic Approach in Turkish Second Language Acquisition and Teaching

Abstract

This paper investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of the Turkish category Ad tamlaması (AT). AT consists an umbrella term which is encountered in Turkish grammars and L2-Turkish coursebooks to refer to three forms of Nominal Syntagmatic Sets (NSS), namely a) N-(n)In N-(s)I(n), b) N N-(s)I(n) and c) N N-(y) . This paper is trying to examine whether the apparently formal similarity of these 3 Nominal Syntagmatic Sets Ad Tamlaması (NSS-AT) in Turkish can be correlated with a respective degree of ease in L2 acquisition and simultaneity in L2 teaching or not. The main aim of this paper is to delineate the differences of these three NSS forms by testing them upon 12 morpho-syntactic criteria. The test results will show how much syntactically analytic and semantically transparent each of these sets is. We will conclude that the formal differentiation of the 3 NSS types does not always correspond with functional- semantic differentiation, which has implications on the difficulties these forms create in L2-learners. We will show that in the L2 learning process of the 3 NSS-AT forms, we expect a learning step ahead in the analytic N-(n)In N-(s)I(n) form compared to non-analytic compounds such as the N N-(s)I(n) form and more blurred cases such as the N N-(y) form, which shares properties of both Noun Phrases (NPs) and compounds. From a didactic scope, we come to assume that the traditional interconnection of the three NSS-Ad Tamlaması forms in Turkish L2-teaching and L2-learning methods should be put aside and rather give its place in alternative more anti-holistic approaches which would uncover the hidden syntactic properties of the 3 forms rather than stress the similarities between them.

Keywords

• Turkish as a second language
• Turkish SLA
• Turkish possessıves
• Turkish compounds
• Ad tamlaması

References

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