This study analyses variation sets in a sample of child-directed speech (CDS) in Turkish in terms of their structure and effect on child speech. The term "variation set" was first introduced to describe the sequences of repetitions, in which the intention behind expressions stays the same throughout the whole conversation while the form…

The vocabulary of a language is a system of interrelated lexical networks but not a collection of independent items. Vocabulary of a language is organised into fields within which words interrelate and define each other in various ways. Sense relations are not enough to explain the relation between some lexical items. For example, we cannot…

This study investigated how Turkish-speaking children and adults interpret negative sentences with disjunction (English "or") and ones with conjunction (English "and"). The goal was to see whether Turkish-speaking children and adults assigned the same interpretation to both kinds of sentences and, if not, to determine the…

Pragmatic development requires the ability to use linguistic forms, along with non-verbal cues, to focus an interlocutor's attention on a referent during conversation. We investigate the development of this ability by examining how the use of demonstratives is learned in Turkish, where a three-way demonstrative system ("bu,"…