LINGUIST List 19.902

Tue Mar 18 2008

Diss: Psycholing: Altan: 'The Influence of Vowel Harmony on Turkish...'

Editor for this issue: Evelyn Richter <evelynlinguistlist.org>

        1.    Asli Altan, The Influence of Vowel Harmony on Turkish Native Speakers Learning an Artificial Language System
Message 1: The Influence of Vowel Harmony on Turkish Native Speakers Learning an Artificial Language System
Date: 17-Mar-2008
From: Asli Altan <asli_altantryahoo.com>
Subject: The Influence of Vowel Harmony on Turkish Native Speakers Learning an Artificial Language System
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Institution: Hacettepe University Program: Department of English Linguistics Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2008

Author: Asli Altan

Dissertation Title: The Influence of Vowel Harmony on Turkish Native Speakers Learning an Artificial Language System

Linguistic Field(s): Psycholinguistics
Dissertation Director:
İsil Ozyildirim Guray Konig Ayfer Altay Hatice Sofu Nalan Buyukkantarcioglu
Dissertation Abstract:

In this dissertation, we elicited speech errors by experiments and analysedthem to see what they reveal about vowel harmony (VH). The basic questionis whether VH helps speakers to learn an artificial language system. VH canfacilitate learning in two ways: ease in speech production or ease inlearning. The way we looked at this is by testing Turkish speakers andanalyse whether VH had an effect in learning the system.

In the experiments, learning effects in an artificial language wasanalysed. The question of whether the subjects learned VH was tested inthree ways: first, the diversity and quantity of their speech errors;second, by the test phase and third by analyzing the words subjectsremembered. In previous studies, it was attested that speech errors abideby phonotactic rules of the language (Dell et al., 2000).

There were two conditions in the experiment. In the first condition, wordswere categorized as either adhering to backness/rounding VH or not. Therewere three groups in this condition. The first is the VH where the wordshad vowels which were agreeing for backness and rounding. The second groupwas disharmony and the third group was a mixed one. All the subjects weregiven 180 non-sense words made according to the condition they were trainedon. They were then asked to read those words while they were recorded.

The second condition in the experiment was height harmony. Although Turkishdoes not have this property, this condition was used to see whether Turkishspeakers would be able to learn this condition which is attested in manyother languages. There were again three groups under this condition: vowelheight harmony, height disharmony and mixed group.

There was also a test phase in all six conditions, where subjects weretested whether they learned the condition they were trained on by choosingthe word that was similar to the words they saw before. In the last part ofthe experiment, subjects were asked to write down the words theyremembered. The aim here was again to see whether the subjects learned therules (VH or disharmony) used to create the words they were trained on.

The results revealed that subjects abide by the conditions of the systemthey were presented with in the experiment. Subjects preserved the systemthey were trained on even in their speech errors. There were certainpatterns in the speech errors of subjects. This finding is valid for bothharmony and disharmony subjects. Mixed group subjects made more speecherrors. This underlies the finding that as long as there is a pattern(whether harmony or disharmony) in the artificial language system, subjectswere able to learn it. However, a lack of pattern is difficult for thesubjects.

When the results of height harmony subjects were compared to backnessharmony subjects, it was revealed that backness harmony subjects didbetter. Since backness harmony was similar to the harmony in Turkish, it isclaimed that this similarity has an effect. Thus, the finding in previousstudies (Oh & Cole, 2006; Linebaugh, 2007) that backness/rounding harmonyis more of a facilitative nature than height harmony was also supported inthis study.

The findings in the test part and the words remembered part were alsoparallel to the results in speech errors part. The backness/roundingharmony subjects were more successful than other groups. It was observedthat height harmony was more difficult for Turkish subjects compared tobackness/rounding harmony. But the results of the mixed condition subjectsreveal that even vowel disharmony was easier than a lack of pattern. Theresults point out to the fact that VH is a property that facilitates bothproduction and perception.




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