Native Speakers Of Turkish Research Articles

English

Communication is one of the most important aspects of social life. Social interactions have increased the necessity for communication and learning of language. Social needs which constitute the main goal of teaching activities fill the gap of learning language. Linguistic surveys have revealed an important finding on educational activities and outputs. One of them is distributional linguistic theory. The purpose of this work is to describe the connection between Polish speakers who learned Turkish as a foreign language having preference for syntax and Turkish native speakers having preference for syntax using distributional linguistic theory. In this study, survey model, a kind of quantitative research, was used. Quantitative research data were collected by document review. The survey was carried out with Polish and Turkish university students in 2013/2014 academic year in spring semester. The working group consists of 20 students who were chosen with stratified random sampling. The findings explain the meaning statistically, and consequences were tabulated. There are differences in the syntax and sentence length of the working group in written language. Key words: Turkish language education, distributional linguistic theory, writing skill.

The Attitude of Students Who Are Native Speakers of Turkish in England towards Turkish Lessons Based on Their Demographic Characteristics

The Attitude of Students Who Are Native Speakers of Turkish in England towards Turkish Lessons Based on Their Demographic Characteristics

The JESTKOD database: an affective multimodal database of dyadic interactions

In human-to-human communication, gesture and speech co-exist in time with a tight synchrony, and gestures are often utilized to complement or to emphasize speech. In human–computer interaction systems, natural, affective and believable use of gestures would be a valuable key component in adopting and emphasizing human-centered aspects. However, natural and affective multimodal data, for studying computational models of gesture and speech, is limited. In this study, we introduce the JESTKOD database, which consists of speech and full-body motion capture data recordings in dyadic interaction setting under agreement and disagreement scenarios. Participants of the dyadic interactions are native Turkish speakers and recordings of each participant are rated in dimensional affect space. We present our multimodal data collection and annotation process, as well as our preliminary experimental studies on agreement/disagreement classification of dyadic interactions using body gesture and speech data. The JESTKOD database provides a valuable asset to investigate gesture and speech towards designing more natural and affective human–computer interaction systems.

The processing of morphologically complex words in a specific speaker group

The present study investigates to what extent morphological priming varies across different groups of native speakers of a language. In two masked-priming experiments, we investigate the processing of morphologically complex Turkish words in Turkish heritage speakers raised and living in Germany. Materials and experimental design were based on Kırkıcı and Clahsen’s (2013) study on morphological processing in Turkish native speakers and L2 learners, allowing for direct comparisons between the three groups. Experiment 1 investigated priming effects for morphologically related prime-target pairs. Heritage speakers showed a similar pattern of results as the L1 comparison group, with significant priming effects for prime-target pairs with inflected primes (e.g. ‘sorar-sor’ asks-ask) as well as for prime-target pairs with derived primes (e.g. ‘sağlık-sağ’ health-healthy). In Experiment 2, we measured priming effects for prime-target pairs which were semantically and morphologically unrelated, but only related with regard to orthographic overlap (e.g. ‘devre-dev’ period-giant). Unlike both L1 speakers raised in Turkey and highly proficient L2 learners, heritage speakers also showed significant priming effects in this condition. Our results suggest that heritage speakers differ from both native speakers and L2 learners in that they rely more on (orthographic) surface form properties of the stimulus during early stages of word recognition, at the expense of morphological decomposition.

Discriminability of non-native tonal contours in low-pass filtered speech

Native speakers of a language are able to easily detect non-native “accents”—usually a perceived accent is attributed to phonemic- and phonetic- level information. However, a growing body of work suggests that non-native speakers also exhibit differences from native speakers at the prosodic level. Differences are exhibited in the placement of lexical stress and phrasal accents, as well as the acoustic cues used in prominence production; prosodic differences in production appear to pattern in (native)-language-specific ways (Morrill, ICPhS Proceedings, 2015). In this experiment, we ask (1) whether differences in the realization of tonal contours are perceived by listeners, and (2) whether perceptual discriminability is patterning according to speakers’ native language. Participants listened to low-pass filtered phrases from the Stella passage recordings on the GMU Speech Accent Archive—produced by native speakers of English, Mandarin, Korean, Arabic, and Turkish—and judged whether speakers were saying the same thing. Results indicate that participants were less likely to rate two phrases as the same (even when they were) if they had been produced by speakers of different native languages. Patterns of discriminability across language pairings are attributed to differences in the number and timing of tonal events (e.g., pitch accents).

Is Seeing Gesture Necessary to Gesture Like a Native Speaker?

Speakers of all languages gesture, but there are differences in the gestures that they produce. Do speakers learn language-specific gestures by watching others gesture or by learning to speak a particular language? We examined this question by studying the speech and gestures produced by 40 congenitally blind adult native speakers of English and Turkish (n = 20/language), and comparing them with the speech and gestures of 40 sighted adult speakers in each language (20 wearing blindfolds, 20 not wearing blindfolds). We focused on speakers’ descriptions of physical motion, which display strong cross-linguistic differences in patterns of speech and gesture use. Congenitally blind speakers of English and Turkish produced speech that resembled the speech produced by sighted speakers of their native language. More important, blind speakers of each language used gestures that resembled the gestures of sighted speakers of that language. Our results suggest that hearing a particular language is sufficient to gesture like a native speaker of that language.

Perceptual Correlates of Turkish Word Stress and Their Contribution to Automatic Lexical Access: Evidence from Early ERP Components.

Perceptual correlates of Turkish word stress and their contribution to lexical access were studied using the mismatch negativity (MMN) component in event-related potentials (ERPs). The MMN was expected to indicate if segmentally identical Turkish words were distinguished on the sole basis of prosodic features such as fundamental frequency (f0), spectral emphasis (SE), and duration. The salience of these features in lexical access was expected to be reflected in the amplitude of MMN responses. In a multi-deviant oddball paradigm, neural responses to changes in f0, SE, and duration individually, as well as to all three features combined, were recorded for words and pseudowords presented to 14 native speakers of Turkish. The word and pseudoword contrast was used to differentiate language-related effects from acoustic-change effects on the neural responses. First and in line with previous findings, the overall MMN was maximal over frontal and central scalp locations. Second, changes in prosodic features elicited neural responses both in words and pseudowords, confirming the brain's automatic response to any change in auditory input. However, there were processing differences between the prosodic features, most significantly in f0: While f0 manipulation elicited a slightly right-lateralized frontally-maximal MMN in words, it elicited a frontal P3a in pseudowords. Considering that P3a is associated with involuntary allocation of attention to salient changes, the manipulations of f0 in the absence of lexical processing lead to an intentional evaluation of pitch change. f0 is therefore claimed to be lexically specified in Turkish. Rather than combined features, individual prosodic features differentiate language-related effects from acoustic-change effects. The present study confirms that segmentally identical words can be distinguished on the basis of prosodic information alone, and establishes the salience of f0 in lexical access.

Discourse management

Speakers achieve coherence in discourse by alternating between differential lexical forms e.g. noun phrase, pronoun, and null form in accordance with the accessibility of the entities they refer to, i.e. whether they introduce an entity into discourse for the first time or continue referring to an entity they already mentioned before. Moreover, tracking of entities in discourse is a multimodal phenomenon. Studies show that speakers are sensitive to the informational structure of discourse and use fuller forms (e.g. full noun phrases) in speech and gesture more when re-introducing an entity while they use attenuated forms (e.g. pronouns) in speech and gesture less when maintaining a referent. However, those studies focus mainly on non-pro-drop languages (e.g. English, German and French). The present study investigates whether the same pattern holds for pro-drop languages. It draws data from adult native speakers of Turkish using elicited narratives. We find that Turkish speakers mostly use fuller forms to code subject referents in re-introduction context and the null form in maintenance context and they point to gesture space for referents more in re-introduction context compared maintained context. Hence we provide supportive evidence for the reverse correlation between the accessibility of a discourse referent and its coding in speech and gesture. We also find that, as a novel contribution, third person pronoun is used in re-introduction context only when the referent was previously mentioned as the object argument of the immediately preceding clause.

Does language shape silent gesture?

Languages differ in how they organize events, particularly in the types of semantic elements they express and the arrangement of those elements within a sentence. Here we ask whether these cross-linguistic differences have an impact on how events are represented nonverbally; more specifically, on how events are represented in gestures produced without speech (silent gesture), compared to gestures produced with speech (co-speech gesture). We observed speech and gesture in 40 adult native speakers of English and Turkish (N=20/per language) asked to describe physical motion events (e.g., running down a path)—a domain known to elicit distinct patterns of speech and co-speech gesture in English- and Turkish-speakers. Replicating previous work (Kita & Özyürek, 2003), we found an effect of language on gesture when it was produced with speech—co-speech gestures produced by English-speakers differed from co-speech gestures produced by Turkish-speakers. However, we found no effect of language on gesture when it was produced on its own—silent gestures produced by English-speakers were identical in how motion elements were packaged and ordered to silent gestures produced by Turkish-speakers. The findings provide evidence for a natural semantic organization that humans impose on motion events when they convey those events without language.

NATIVE AND NONNATIVE INTERPRETATION OF PRONOMINAL FORMS

This study investigates the influence of grammatical role and discourse-level cues on the interpretation of different pronominal forms in native speakers of French, native speakers of Turkish, and Turkish learners of French. In written questionnaires, we found that native speakers of French were influenced by discourse-level cues when interpreting ambiguous overt subject pronouns in French, whereas native speakers of Turkish were mainly influenced by a syntactic cue—subjecthood—when interpreting null subjects (pro) in Turkish translation equivalents. When interpreting implicit subjects of nonfinite dependent clauses (PRO), native speakers of both French and Turkish were influenced by subjecthood. Finally, Turkish learners of French were influenced by discourse-level cues in the interpretation of overt pronouns as well as PRO and showed no subject preference in either case. These results are in line with approaches to second language (L2) acquisition that stress the role of discourse-level principles in the processing and use of a L2 (Clahsen & Felser, 2006; Klein & Perdue, 1997).

To What Extent does Culture Create Language Learning in Terms of Proxemics?

The aim of this study was to determine whether the English teachers’ perceptions of proxemics, which is a frequently ignored but crucial part of non-verbal communication, vary from that of American people because of their native cultures. With this aim, they were provided with 60 multiple choice questions with pictures illustrating different proximities and asked to choose the most appropriate options for the given situations. The participants were chosen depending on purposeful voluntary basis and consist of 37 English teachers. 28 of them have been exposed to different cultures by going abroad and 19 of them by taking special courses on culture. They were native speakers of Turkish and learned English as a foreign language. The obtained data was evaluated by calculating mean scores and applying one sample t-test, independent samples t-test and ANOVA in SPSS 22. Depending on the findings, it was discovered that females, those who had been abroad, taken culture courses and higher educational degree tend to have slightly higher scores. It can be deduced that non-native English teachers should be encouraged to have higher education, go abroad and take culture courses.

Acoustic Voice Analysis of Young Turkish Speakers

One of the objective assessments of voice is acoustic analysis, particularly, the parameters fundamental frequency (F0), jitter, shimmer, and noise-to-harmonics ratio (NHR). Because the normative data for healthy native Turkish male and female speakers are lacking in the literature, this study aimed to obtain F0, perturbation parameters, and NHR in three sustained vowels (/Λ/, /i/, and /u/) among young Turkish speaking adults. The native Turkish speakers with normal voice aged between 18 and 32 years were included in the study (44 women, 39 men). Voice samples were recorded using Computerized Speech Lab, and data were analyzed with the statistics software SPSS Statistics 21.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). The F0 values of vowels /Λ/, /i/, and /u/ were greater for women (239.78Hz, 251.97Hz, and 250.29Hz, respectively) than for men (127.11Hz, 137.23Hz, and 134.15Hz, respectively). All shimmer values for all vowels and jitter values for /Λ/ and /u/ were found significantly low in men; however, no difference was found for jitter values of /i/ between genders. There is no effect of gender on NHR. Only in women, NHR of high vowels was found to be lower than that of vowel /Λ/. There is a significant difference for F0 values between the genders as expected. Comparisons of perturbation values were significantly different for some pairs of vowels. There was no significant difference between NHR values between the genders. These findings can be compared with Turkish speakers who have different voice disorders for the further studies.

Body Parts As Frames In The Perception Of Turkish Learners Of English

The aim of the research is to investigateconceptual framesofbody parts,as perceived by native Turkish speakers while they learn English idioms that employbody-part components. The study is mainly based on the assumptions of the theory of frames by Minsky (1974), who proposed the frame system forthe cognitive sciences. Vygotsky (1986) introduced conceptual frames in his theory of human development, and Fillmore (2006) operated with the term “frame” in his frame semantics. The abovementioned theories have been applied to make up a network of ‘nodes’ and ‘relations’ that Turkish learners of Englishbuilt up while guessing the meaning of English idioms, with the focus on their body-part components. The experiment was conducted among first-year students with an intermediate level of English from the department of English Language Education at Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Participants were asked to fill in questionnaires and to guess the meaning of 15 English idioms that employbody-part components such as eyes, hands, head, heart, leg/foot, nose, and tongue. To ensure thevalidity and reliability of the experiment, interviews were conducted with five respondents and a think-aloud protocol was conducted with six other respondents. The qualitative data obtained in the experiment were analyzed, and the results showed that Turkish students build different frames related tobody-part meanings based on their universal, cultural and personal world perception. Keywords: frames, idioms, body parts, English, Turkish

Rotator cuff-quality of life scale: adaptation to Turkish.

The adaptation of scales to the native language and cultural setting of the patient is essential for obtaining more reliable results in scientific studies. In this study, the rotator cuff-quality of life scale (RC-QoLS) was translated into Turkish, and validity and reliability testing was performed on the scale. The scale was first translated into Turkish and then from Turkish to English by another language specialist. Subsequently, the two translations were evaluated by two orthopaedic surgeons who had comprehensive knowledge of English to create the final Turkish version of RC-QoLS. The scale was used for the assessment of 54 patients (average age 56 years) with rotator cuff tear scheduled for surgery. The scale was completed by each patient two times with 1-week interval. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranged between 0.895 and 0.980 and intraclass correlation coefficients ranged between 0.807 and 0.976, this rendered all domains reliable. The scale gave results very near to those obtained by the original questionnaire with respect to the constructed validity and internal consistency as well as domain relationships. In general, the Turkish version of the RC-QoLS is a valid and reliable test with high differentiating power that may be used in the evaluation the quality of life of patients with RC tear in patients who are native Turkish speaker. The use of the Turkish version of RC-QoLS may contribute to the making of a more reliable evaluation in the studies on RC problems in the Turkish society.

The use of verbal morphology in Turkish as a third language: The case of Russian–English–Turkish trilinguals

Aims and Objectives: Several studies suggest that third language acquisition (TLA) is marked with complex patterns of language interaction. However, it is not clear yet to what extent multilinguals activate each of their background languages in TLA, as various factors may trigger the activation of one of the previously learnt languages. This study aims to contribute to the discussion by examining the use of verbal morphology in third language (L3) Turkish of Russian–English–Turkish trilinguals. We investigate whether the use of verbal morphology in L3 Turkish of Russian–English–Turkish trilinguals differs from that of Turkish native speakers and in the case of a deviation, which of the background languages can account for it. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study is done within the framework of cross-linguistic influence. Data and Analysis: The data are collected from eight native speakers of Russian who are highly proficient in their L2 English and L3 Turkish, and use their three languages more or less equally every day. Fictional narratives are employed in the study as the tool for data collection. The use of finite and non-finite verbal forms in Turkish is compared with the baseline data coming from native speakers of Turkish. Findings/Conclusions: The results reveal that the trilingual participants mainly use the verbal morphology consistently with native speakers of Turkish; nonetheless, two deviations from the Turkish baseline stand out: tendency to use finite verbal forms in their noun clauses and inconsistency in the use of temporal-aspectual markers in finite verbal forms. The former can be attributed to the L1 and L2 interlanguage, while the latter can be attributed to the influence of particularly L1 Russian. Originality, and significance/Implications: Thus, the study provides evidence that the source of interference into L3 production is likely to occur due to the cross-linguistic influence from L1, which in turn might imply the predominant position of L1 over sequentially learnt languages at the morphosyntactic level in the language processing.

First language attrition of constraints on wh-scrambling: Does the second language have an effect?

This paper examines the effects of English as a second language (L2) on Turkish as a first language (L1) in the domain of wh-scrambling, as formulated in the generative framework. Unlike English, Turkish allows wh-extractions out of islands under certain morphological conditions. The data come from 27 native Turkish speakers, who have immigrated to an English-speaking country at an adult age and used English as a dominant language. The results of an acceptability judgment task revealed the same tendencies in the attrition and monolingual control group towards rejection of certain grammatical wh-extractions. Thus, the findings implicate no L2 influence in L1 change.

THU0510 Turkish Lupuspro: Cross Cultural Validation Study for Lupus

BackgroundLupusPRO is a disease targeted patient reported outcome measure that was developed and validated in patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) in the USA. Its Spanish vesion has also been...

Impact of mother tongue and gender on overweight, obesity and extreme obesity in 24,989 Viennese children/adolescents (2–16 years)

The present survey aims at determining the prevalence of extreme obesity (defined as a body mass index (BMI) ≥ 99.5th percentile) for the first time in Austria and at investigating the relationship between weight status and mother tongue in a representative Viennese sample of 24,989 children and adolescents (2-16 years) with a percentage of approximately 46 % of migration background.Directly measured anthropometric data on body weight and height were collected and BMI was calculated. Prevalence of overweight, obesity and extreme obesity was determined for every subgroup according to mother tongue using the German national reference criteria by Kromeyer-Hauschild et al.In this sample, 2.1 % of all children and adolescents had to be classified as being extremely obese. More boys (2.3 %) than girls (1.9 %) suffered from extreme obesity (p = 0.048). Total 1.7 % of children and adolescents with German as their native language, 2.5 % of Turkish native speakers and 2.9 % of children and adolescents with another mother tongue were extremely obese (p ≤ 0.001). The highest prevalence of overweight or obesity was found in Turkish-native-speaking children and adolescents (p ≤ 0.001), whereas the lowest one was found in German-native-speaking children and adolescents (p ≤ 0.001).This large study clearly shows that extreme obesity is a common disease and largely neglected. Apparently, another native language than German, as an indicator for a migration background, may be associated with a substantially higher probability for the development of extreme obesity in Vienna, Austria. Thus, effective preventive measures to overcome obesity are urgently needed.

Vowel perception and production in Turkish children acquiring L2 German

First language (L1) phonological categories strongly influence late learners' perception and production of second language (L2) categories. For learners who start learning an L2 early in life (“early learners”), this L1 influence appears to be substantially reduced or at least more variable. In this paper, we examine the age at which L1 vowel categories influence the acquisition of L2 vowels. We tested a child population with a very narrow range of age of first exposure, controlling for the use of L1 vs. L2, and various naturally produced contrasts that are not allophonic in the L1 of the children. An oddity discrimination task provided evidence that children who are native speakers of Turkish and began learning German as an L2 in kindergarten categorized difficult German contrasts differently from age-matched native speakers. Their vowel productions of these same contrasts (un-cued object naming) were mostly target-like.

Exploring Metadiscourse in Master’s Dissertation Abstracts: Cultural and Linguistic Variations across PostgraduateWriters

This study investigates metadiscourse in the dissertation abstracts written by Native Speakers of Turkish (NST), Turkish Speakers of English (TSE) and Native Speakers of English (NSE) in the Social Sciences to determine how they make use of metadiscourse devices. It attempts to determine whether student writers from a shared cultural background (Turkish) tend to use similar rhetorical features to those of their mother tongue or harmonise themselves with the language (English) in which they are writing. Metadiscourse as a rhetorical device for the effective use of language facilitates writers in guiding their readers, conveying their ideas, establishing and determining the social distance of the reader-writer relationship, and creating an involved style of writer persona or a more remote stance. In that sense, interactive resources employed by writers help readers to find the information needed and interactional resources convey to readers the personality of the writers and their assertions. In addition, using ‘more personal’ resources is a way of keeping readers more intentionally within the text to interpret what is proposed by the writers personally and to judge them. The overall aim of the study is to compare and contrast 90 abstracts of dissertations produced by native Turkish speakers (30), native English speakers (30) and Turkish speakers of English (30) in the Social Sciences and to consider how writing in English (L2) deviates from writing in Turkish (L1) and becomes closer to the target language in terms of the metadiscourse elements, that is, interactive resources (transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials and code glosses) and interactional resources (hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers and self-mentions). 1