Word formation through derivation vs. compounding perspectives from child language acquisition of Turkish

Abstract

Languages differ with respect to their word formation tendencies and children's first language acquisition patterns reflect the dominant word formation options in their language starting at a very early age. Universal tendencies (e.g., preferences due to transparency and regularity of morphological structures) interact with language specific features to a certain extent. This chapter reviews the findings on Turkish speaking children's acquisition of derivational morphology versus compounds and shows that Turkish displays properties of both. It further provides a discussion of what can be considered derivational as opposed to inflectional in Turkish, as there seems to be disagreements in the literature which are reflected in the language acquisition analyses, having a potential impact on the interpretation of the results. © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company