Acquisition of English reflexives by Turkish l2 learners of English

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Enformatik Enstitüsü, Bilişsel Bilimler Anabilim Dalı, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2010

Öğrenci: YILMAZ KÖYLÜ

Danışman: DENİZ ZEYREK BOZŞAHİN

Özet:

This M.A. thesis investigates the L2 acquisition of binding properties of English reflexives by Turkish L2 learners to address the issue of UG availability in L2 grammar. 140 Turkish L2 learners of English (67 elementary, 73 upper) participated in this study. They were all students at the Department of Basic English, Middle East Technical University. In addition, in the control group, there were 8 native speakers of English. A grammaticality judgment task and a story-based truth-value judgment task were used to examine whether the L2 grammars of the Turkish learners of English are governed by the principles and parameters of UG in the context of reflexive binding. According to the Full Transfer Full Access Model (FTFA), L2 learners have direct access to innate principles and parameters of Universal Grammar (UG) from the initial state to the end-state in the process of L2 acquisition. In line with FTFA, the results of the two tests suggest that the L2 learners’ grammar is UG-constrained even though they do not fully converge on native English norms with respect to reflexive binding.