Asst. Prof. Dr. Aslı Aktan Erciyes from Kadir Has University is going to virtually visit our lab on January 12th and give a speech titled "Effects of L2-English on Causal Structures in L1-Turkish Frog Story Narratives of Children". For further details and participation information, please contact us lcd@metu.edu.tr

Abstract:

The present study investigates the effect of learning a second language (L2-English) with different causal constructions compared to first language (L1-Turkish) on the causal language produced during L1 narrative constructions. While causal language input can support causal reasoning, there are crosslinguistic differences in causal constructions. Turkish uses both morphological (changing a verb by adding suffixes to suggest causality e.g., Yap ''do'', Yap-TIR 'make someone do something') and lexical (a verb that encodes the cause and effect within e.g., yakala 'catch') causatives. On the other hand, English only uses lexical ones. Both languages use causal connectors. In the present study, 5- and 7-year-old monolingual (L1-Turkish) and bilingual (L1-Turkish; L2-English) (N = 111, 60 monolinguals, 51 bilinguals) elicited narratives in L1 for the picture book 'Frog, Where Are You?' Results indicated that 5-year-old monolinguals used causal connectors more than 5-year-old bilinguals and 7-year-old monolinguals used lexical causatives more than 7-year-old bilinguals. These findings suggest that monolingual children who are more exposed to morphological causatives may have a different expression of causality reflected in causal connectors and lexical causatives. There were no differences in morphological causatives which occur later in development.