Incremental processing in head-final child language: online comprehension of relative clauses in Turkish-speaking children and adults

The present study investigates the parsing of pre-nominal relative clauses (RCs) in children for the first time with a realtime methodology that reveals moment-to-moment processing patterns as the sentence unfolds. A self-paced listening experiment with Turkish-speaking children (aged 5–8) and adults showed that both groups display a sign of processing cost both in subject and object RCs at different points through the flow of the utterance when integrating the cues that are uninformative (i.e., ambiguous in function) and that are structurally and probabilistically unexpected. Both groups show a processing facilitation as soon as the morphosyntactic dependencies are completed and parse the unbounded dependencies rapidly using the morphosyntactic cues rather than waiting for the clause-final filler. These findings show that five-year-old children show similar patterns to adults in processing the morphosyntactic cues incrementally and in forming expectations about the rest of the utterance on the basis of the probabilistic model of their language.

Ultimate attainment in the use of lexical collocations among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany and Turkish-German returnees

In this paper we show that heritage speakers and returnees are fundamentally different from the majority of adult second language learners with respect to their use of collocations (Laufer & Waldman, 2011). We compare the use of lexical collocations involving yap- “do” and et- “do” among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany (n=45) with those found among Turkish returnees (n=65) and Turkish monolinguals (n=69). Language use by returnees is an understudied resource although this group can provide crucial insights into the specific language ability of heritage speakers. Results show that returnees who had been back for one year avoid collocations with yap- and use some hypercorrect forms in et-, whilst returnees who had been back for seven years upon recording produce collocations that are quantitatively and qualitatively similar to those of monolingual speakers of Turkish. We discuss implications for theories of ultimate attainment and incomplete acquisition in heritage speakers.

Genetic diversity at the Dhn3 locus in Turkish Hordeum spontaneum populations with comparative structural analyses

We analysed Hordeum spontaneum accessions from 21 different locations to understand the genetic diversity of HsDhn3 alleles and effects of single base mutations on the intrinsically disordered structure of the resulting polypeptide (HsDHN3). HsDHN3 was found to be YSK2-type with a low-frequency 6-aa deletion in the beginning of Exon 1. There is relatively high diversity in the intron region of HsDhn3 compared to the two exon regions. We have found subtle differences in K segments led to changes in amino acids chemical properties. Predictions for protein interaction profiles suggest the presence of a protein-binding site in HsDHN3 that coincides with the K1 segment. Comparison of DHN3 to closely related cereals showed that all of them contain a nuclear localization signal sequence flanking to the K1 segment and a novel conserved region located between the S and K1 segments [E(D/T)DGMGGR]. We found that H. vulgare, H. spontaneum, and Triticum urartu DHN3s have a greater number of phosphorylation sites for protein kinase C than other cereal species, which may be related to stress adaptation. Our results show that the nature and extent of mutations in the conserved segments of K1 and K2 are likely to be key factors in protection of cells.

Ultimate attainment in the use of collocations among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany and Turkish-German returnees

In this paper we show that heritage speakers and returnees are fundamentally different from the majority of adult second language learners with respect to their use of collocations (Laufer & Waldman, 2011). We compare the use of lexical collocations involving yap- “do” and et- “do” among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany (n=45) with those found among Turkish returnees (n=65) and Turkish monolinguals (n=69). Language use by returnees is an understudied resource although this group can provide crucial insights into the specific language ability of heritage speakers. Results show that returnees who had been back for one year avoid collocations with yap- and use some hypercorrect forms in et-, whilst returnees who had been back for seven years upon recording produce collocations that are quantitatively and qualitatively similar to those of monolingual speakers of Turkish. We discuss implications for theories of ultimate attainment and incomplete acquisition in heritage speakers.