Edited by Belma Haznedar and F. Nihan Ketrez
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 20] 2016
► pp. 153–175
We present research on the emergence and development of verbal and non-verbal referential skills of Turkish L1 learners. Turkish has interesting distinctive features compared to other frequently studied languages. The first section presents an overview of research about typically developing L1 learners’ comprehension and production skills in various preverbal and verbal referential situations. The second section presents contrastively interesting properties of Turkish setting the ground for crosslinguistic comparisons. The third section reviews experimental research on Turkish L1 learners’ referential communication skills. The fourth section reviews naturalistic studies about verbal and nonverbal devices employed by Turkish L1 learners during referential interactions with primary caregivers. Finally, we provide critical evaluation and future directions.