Acquisition of English Relative Clauses by Turkish and Polish Speakers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13294470Keywords:
Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy, Relative Clauses, Turkish Native Speakers, Polish Native SpeakersAbstract
The study investigates whether there is a predictable order in the acquisition of English relative clauses for the Turkish learners of English using Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH) hypothesis (Keenan & Comrie, 1977). At the same time, it examines whether there is a difference in the acquisition order of English relative clauses between Turkish native speakers and Polish native speakers. For this aim 20 Turkish and 20 Polish English language department students were recruited in the study as participants. Independent samples t-tests were run on the two group’s data which were gathered through a sentence combination and a grammatical judgement test. Additionally, English learners of Polish and Turkish students’ relative clause errors were compared in the study. The results contribute our understanding of Turkish students’ processing difficulties in the acquisition of relative clauses in English as a foreign language. The findings indicated that NPAH hypothesis is not fully supported in this particular data. However, in terms of genitive RC (whose), the results were in accordance with Baysal’s (2001) study which puts forth that in Turkish Native speakers, genitive RC violates otherwise existing hierarchy. Furthermore, in the IO RC (indirect object relative clause) type, the two groups showed meaningful differences. Based on the error analysis of the groups, it is concluded that English learners of Polish and Turkish participants differ in the type and quantity of errors that they are making while learning RCs, suggesting first language should be taken into consideration in English language instruction.
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