The Generalization Patterns of Turkish Aorist in L1 Turkish Speakers

Abstract

The morphological processing and representation of regular and irregular inflected forms have been investigated in many European languages and the results indicate that L1 speakers usually employ two distinct mechanisms; namely rule-based and associative. This study aims to explore the generalization patterns of Turkish aorist in L1 Turkish speakers and to ascertain the processing and representation of irregular forms. The results of the nonword acceptability judgment task indicate that L1 Turkish speakers performed similar to speakers of European languages as they have employed a rule-based mechanism for generalizing regular forms and an associative mechanism for irregular forms. The results are discussed in terms of different models proposed for morphological processing and generalization patterns.

Keywords

• turkish aorist
• morphological processing
• generalization
• rule-based mechanism
• associative mechanism