Ayhan Aksu-Koç

On the role of morphological richness in the early development of noun and verb inflection

This study proposes a new methodology for determining the relationship between child-directed speech and child speech in early acquisition. It illustrates the use of this methodology in investigating the relationship between the morphological richness of child-directed speech and the speed of morphological development in child speech. Both variables are defined in terms of mean size of paradigm (MSP) and estimated in a set of longitudinal spontaneous speech corpora of nine children and their caretakers. The children are aged 1;3–3;0, acquiring nine different languages that vary in terms of morphological richness. The main result is that the degree of morphological richness in child-directed speech is positively related to the speed of development of noun and verb paradigms in child speech.

The role of input vs. universal predispositions in the emergence of tense-aspect morphology: evidence from Turkish:

This study investigates the role of input, both in terms of distri butional tendencies and contexts of use, in the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology. Longitudinal data from three children, with mothers input for only one, constitute the data base. Results showed that (1) the distribution of different inflections with verbs of different inherent aspect in the childs speech corresponds to that in the mothers speech, (2) the child has stronger preferences for, and first uses the past inflection with, achievement and the present/imperfective inflection with activity and stative verbs. Findings suggest that input and universal cognitive-processing strategies play an interactive role. The nature of this interaction is discussed by considering how mother-child discourse provides the situational and linguistic contexts necessary for learning to talk about temporality.

Role of the Home Context in Relations Between Narrative Abilities and Literacy Practices

It has been a privilege for me to know Ruth at the beginning of my academic career and have the opportunity to develop this relationship into an intellectual one on the one hand, and a personal one on the other. We have shared an office, we have shared projects and ideas, and we have shared fragments of life whenever we could; each experience colored with her energy, her sharpness and her affection gave me something special to keep. In this contribution to her honor, I take the opportunity to summarize some aspects of my work on narratives from the perspective of literacy, two areas that have been a focus of interest and curiosity for both of us.

The role of (explicit) contrast in adjective acquisition: A cross-linguistic longitudinal study of adjective production in spontaneous child speech and parental input.

Experimental studies demonstrate that contrast helps toddlers to extend the meanings of novel adjectives. This study explores whether antonym co-occurrence in spontaneous speech also has an effect on adjective use by the child. The authors studied adjective production in longitudinal speech samples from 16 children (16–36 months) acquiring eight different languages. Adjectives in child speech and child-directed speech were coded as either unrelated or related to a contrastive term in the preceding context. Results show large differences between children in the growth of adjective production. These differences are strongly related to contrast use. High contrast users not only increase adjective use earlier, but also reach a stable level of adjective production in the investigated period. Average or low contrast users increase their adjective production more slowly and do not reach a plateau in the period covered by this study. Initially there is a strong relation between contrast use in child speech and child-directed speech, but this relation diminishes with age.

Effectiveness of an intervention program for six-year-olds: a summer-school model

This study reports on the evaluation of a ‘summer pre-school model’ as an intervention measure. A 10-week program was designed to increase the school readiness of Turkish children from disadvantaged and multilingual environments by supporting their cognitive and linguistic skills during the summer prior to the start of school. The intervention consisted of a Pre-school Education Program with a special focus on Turkish language, pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills. The evaluation study was carried out on its first implementation in a southeastern province of Turkey where it was attended by bilingual six-year-olds. A pre-post, control-group, quasi experimental design was used with 92 intervention trained and 93 non-trained control children from the same neighborhoods. Compared to the control children the intervention children scored significantly higher on post-test measures of pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills, and on measures of syntactic knowledge and story comprehension. The results also revealed the importance of the educational level of the mother for progress in language skills. The findings indicate the overall short-term effectiveness of the program and of the summer pre-school model as a primary prevention strategy that aims to bring children at risk to a higher level of school readiness.