International Journal of Practical and Pedagogical Issues in English Education

International Journal of Practical and Pedagogical Issues in English Education

The Acquisition of Relative Clauses by Turkmen Speaking Children

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
English language Department, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran
Abstract
Researchers have engaged in a spirited debate regarding the acquisition of relative clauses for the past two decades (de Villiers, Tager Flusberg, Hakuta & Cohen, 1979; Sheldon, 1974; Slobin, 1971; Tavakolian, 1981). Early studies on the comprehension of relative clauses, referred to as RCs, utilized interactive tasks involving toys, revealing that children performed randomly until the age of five. However, a subsequent study by Hamburger & Crain (1982) on American children, which controlled for probable processing and pragmatics effects in experimental tasks, demonstrated that four-year-olds exhibited comprehension and production abilities above chance levels. Similarly, a later study by Crain et al. (1990) observed the production of such sentences by two- and three-year-old Italian children. The conflicting findings in studies on RC acquisition have prompted extensive research primarily focused on postnominal languages like English, German, and other European languages (Sheldon, 1974; Flynn & Lust, 1980; Tavakolian, 1981; Goodluck & Tavakolian, 1982; Hamburger & Crain, 1982; Lebeaux, 1990; Labelle, 1990; 1996). Conversely, there is a scarcity of studies on the L1 acquisition of RCs in prenominal languages. It is crucial to consider typologically diverse languages (e.g., Arnon, 2010; Courtney, 2006; Ozeki & Shirai, 2010) to ascertain both the universal and specific aspects of language acquisition.
Keywords

Subjects


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  • Receive Date 04 April 2024
  • Revise Date 15 April 2024
  • Accept Date 20 April 2024