ELiTU talk - December 19, 2011
Development of locative expressions by Deaf and hearing Turkish children: Are
there modality effects?
Sign language expressions of topological spatial relations (e.g., ON, IN, UNDER)
mostly use analogue mappings of real space onto signing space, unlike spoken
languages that use categorical lexemes or locative case markers. This raises
interesting questions about the role of modality in acquisition of spatial relations in
sign languages. However whether and to what extent modality plays role in
acquisition of spatial relations has been controversial – mostly due to the lack of
comparisons of Deaf children to Deaf adults in similar tasks or to age matching
hearing counterparts. Thus, by focusing on three spatial relations (IN / ON/ UNDER),
general research questions of this study are;

How do the locative expressions of native Deaf children who are learning
Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili - “TİD”) compare to those of Turkish
Deaf adults?
 How do the locative expressions of Turkish speaking children compare to
those of Turkish speaking adults?
Here, we examine, as the first time, the development of expressions of spatial
relations by native Deaf children learning TİD (N=7; mean age: 7.9) and by
comparing them to adult native TİD users (N= 7; mean age: 28). Similar data were
also collected from Turkish speaking children (N=7; mean age: 8.2) and adults (N=4;
mean age: 30.2). We gave all groups the same set of pictures containing
configurations of IN, ON, and UNDER where one object was placed in relation to
another (e.g., apple in bowl; pen on paper etc.) and asked to describe them to another
Deaf or hearing person depending on the modality used by the group.
General findings of the study indicate that even though Deaf children preferred
classifier constructions significantly less often than Deaf adults did, both groups were
similar in terms of using simultaneity and following a "Ground before Figure" order
in their descriptions. However, the comparison between Turkish hearing children and
hearing adults shows that the spatial constructions used by hearing children were adult
like structures.
As a conclusion, we do not see a big hindering effect of modality in the development
of spatial expressions in TİD. However, between the ages of 7 and 9, Turkish Deaf
children still need to tune into adult patterns for differential marking of the spatial
relations. Such an observation has not been made for age-matched hearing children.