| The linguistic abilities of children and their development have long been a topic of debate and controversy. One important aspect of this debate concerns how children learn syntax-semantic mappings. I address this question by examining how Turkish-speaking children learn to describe caused motion events (i.e. kicking a ball across a field). Learning to express caused motion events presents a challenge for Turkish-speaking children since different verbs representing caused motion require different constructions or syntactic frames. For instance, whereas the verb yuvarla- roll can be used in the caused motion construction (i.e. Ali topu aþaðý yuvarladý Ali rolled the ball down ), the use of a very similar verb, tekmele- kick is not acceptable (i.e. *Ali topu aþaðý tekmeledi Ali kicked the ball down ). I also study the gestures accompanying the verbal descriptions of Turkish-speaking children and gestures of Turkish deaf children who have not been exposed to any conventional language (homesigners) in order to understand children s representation of caused motion events beyond the verbal level. |
