Third Person Anaphoric Reference by Turkish Speakers of French

Abstract

Rather than being a random sequence of unrelated sentences and clauses, a text must have solid sense relations between its units to be logically and semantically consistent for the reader-hearer. This logical and semantic consistency relating to the construction and configuration of sense in a text is called coherence by text linguists. Coherence is vital for a complete meaning and understanding of a text. As a cohesive device, reference, especially anaphoric reference, has been examined in many studies in recent years. This study aims to investigate anaphoric expressions by Turkish speakers of French in their spontaneous speech. 29 undergraduate students (23 females and 6 males) with 22-25 age range studying at a French language department in Turkey as well as five native speakers of French (three females and two males) with 35-55 age range participated in the study. French dubbed version of an animated cartoon, A Christmas Carol (Mickey et la Magie de Noël), was used as material in this study. The participants were asked to watch and then comment on various themes in the cartoon. Results revealed an overuse of third person pronouns, almost cumulative, in students. Possible reasons of this aggregate usage were then discussed in light of other studies in literature.