Adjectives in the Acquisition of Turkish: A Developmental Profile

Abstract

Acquisition of adjectives have been touched upon in a number of research in Turkish. These studies have shown that, although acquired after nouns and verbs, children use both attributive and predicative adjectives at early ages (Ekmekci 1979; Sofu 1995; Sofu and Turkay 2010; Tribushinina et al. 2010). Taking the findings of these studies as a starting point, this study aims to draw a developmental profile regarding the form, function and frequency of adjectives used in the conversations of monolingual Turkish speaking children and to reveal whether age and gender have any effect on the use of adjectives. For this present study, longitudinal data were used and all grades from the 1st to 8th grade were included. In each grade, there were two subgroups, a boys-only group and a girls-only group, The results showed that simple adjectives are more common than derivational and complex adjectives. The gender difference is seen on the form, variety and function of adjectives.