Use of turkish defining relative clauses by russian learners. difficulties and errors

It is a fact that each language has its own system. That's why, it is inevitable to make mistakes while learning a foreign language. Turkish relative clause structure is one of the most common obstacles that Russian students face while learning the language as it differs from Russian in many aspects. In this respect, the aim of this study is to reveal the most problematic points and to determine the possible reasons for those problems.

Learning a foreign language is a dynamic process which is influenced by many factors such as the structure of the target language, similarities and differences between the target language and the first language of the learner [1]. With this respect, it is inevitable that all learners make mistakes and commit errors. However, that process can be impeded through realizing the errors and operating on them according to the feedback given. According to Ellis [5], there are three reasons for focusing on errors. First, they are conspicuous feature of learner language as they raise the important question of "Why do learners make errors?" Second, it is useful for teachers to know what errors learners make. Third, it is possible that making errors may help learners to learn when they self-correct the errors they make. If the mistakes and errors of language learners in constructing the new language system are analyzed carefully, teaching procedures can be assessed in the light of what is expected to be accomplished in the classroom [9].

While analyzing the errors, it is essential to ask for the sources of them. As each language has its own system, the sources of errors can be categorized within two domains:

(i) interlingual transfer, which is caused by the learner's first language, and (ii) intralingua transfer, which results from faulty or partial learning of the target language [5].From this point of view, acquisition of relative clause structure has been one of the research points in many ways as languages vary in whether they have relative clauses or not.

When learners of Turkish begin to acquire relative clauses, they typically begin with the first type [5]. As the structure of Turkish influences the process of learning, many studies on this matter have been carried out in different countries. Learners of Turkish as a second or foreign language produce a sequence in order to learn relative clauses due to its structural characteristics [15].

This study was carried out with 124year-students of university who completed a preparatory class. In choosing the participants, it was taken into consideration that students are the native speakers of Russian and intermediate level learners of Turkish as the use of relative clauses and distinguishing between defining and non-defining relative clauses require some background knowledge of Turkish language structure. When this study was carried out, the students had already studied the grammar topic and they were supposed to be able to make use of it.

There are two main types of defining relative clauses in Turkish. They are formed with the help of the adding the suffixes to the verbs and required endings. If you want to characterize the doer of an action you will use

–an or –en suffixes, and you will add them according the harmony rule. If you want to characterize the object then you use -dığı, diği suffixes and a required suffix that shows the gender.

Let us see the examples:

• Я вижу ребенка, который бежит

‘который бежит’ is a relative clause in Russian. It shows that we use additional words to form such sentences (not always necessary). In this sentences it is the conjunction ‘который.

• Koşan çocuğu görüyorum.

‘Koşan’ is considered a relative clause in this sentence. As we can see there is only a verb here to form the clause. Koşmak means to run. The suffix –an has the meaning ‘who’.

Another example:

• Когда я вошел в комнату, женщина,

которая читала книгу, улыбнулась. ‘которая читала книгу’ is a relative

clause. It is the Past Tense in this sentence.

• Odaya girdiğim zaman kitap okuyan

kadın güldü.

‘kitap okuyan’ is a relative clause.

İt should be noted that in Turkish there is no tense in relative clauses like these shown above. We can define the tense only when we read the whole sentence to the end. But in Russian we can do it at once.

This kind of relative clause is used when we characterize the doer of an action. It is the child who is running not me, or it is the woman who smiled not me.

But when we characterize the object we use another suffix. Let us see the examples:

• Ваза, которую я купила на прошлой неделе, разбилась.

‘которую я купила на прошлой неделе’ is a relative clause.

• Geçen hafta satın aldığım vazo kırıldı. ‘Geçen hafta satın aldığım’ is a clause.

It is me who bought the vase, but it is the vase I am talking about.

Another example:

• Ты нашел кольцо, которое потерял в прошлый раз?

‘которое потерял в прошлый раз’ is a defining relative clause.

• Geçen sefer kaybettiğin yüzüğünü buldun mu?

‘Geçen sefer kaybettiğin’ is a clause.

When students use these relative clauses in their speech they often make mistakes. It happens because Russian and Turkish are completely different languages.

In order to see these errors, the exam papers of the students which include questions related to use of relative clauses were collected and their answers were checked. There were eight questions related to the relative clauses in the midterm and four of them were answered by half of the class, and the other

four questions were answered by the other half. The aim and the characteristics of the questions in both parts were the same. Furthermore, a quiz prepared especially for the purpose of this study was distributed to the students. This quiz consisted of three parts: the first part included the fill-in-the blanks questions, of which aim was to find out whether the students were able to make use of relative clauses properly and which relative pronouns they would prefer commonly when there was more than one correct option.

In the second part, the students were asked to combine sentences using relative clauses. The aim of this part was to find out whether they were able to combine the sentences keeping in mind that defining and nondefining relative clauses have differences in terms of both their functions and punctuation.

In the third part, the students were asked to translate the sentences with relative clauses into Russian. The purpose of this part was to show that in Turkish relative clauses there are no distinctions between tenses.

The focus of the data analysis was on finding out the reasons for errors in distinguishing between two relative clauses and the effect of Russian on those errors. In determining the errors, the errors that were out of the scope of this study were ignored.

The incorrect answers provided within the study reflect the common errors made by the majority of the class. Sentences were classified according to the type of the errors made. The majority was counted according to the frequency of the students who made the similar mistakes, and their percentages were calculated.

The results of the survey were shown in the tables.

It is always very important to follow the fixed word order in Turkish sentences.

Table 1. Findings related to the errors concerning the sentence structure

Table 1 shows that quite a lot of the students have problems with the word order. In the first sentence 33%, in the second one 25%, in the fourth one 25%, in the fifth one 25%, and in the sixth one 25% of them did not place the clause before the defined noun. Students also did not consider the fact that the meaning of the sentence does not change when that clause is taken out of the sentence. From these examples, we can interpret that it is dif-

ficult for students to remember and understand that in Turkish relative clauses are always put just before the word which is being characterized. Moreover, they make mistakes in the structure of relative clauses themselves. They forget about the fixed word order.

It also should be taken into consideration that these is no tense distinction in clauses which are formed with the help of ending –an/ en.

Table 2. Statistical findings related to the errors concerning the tenses.

It is seen in table 2 that not so many students have problems with tenses. Only some of them failed to define the tense as it is clearly seen from the sentence. So, we can conclude that it is not so difficult for them to define the tense of a relative clause.

Errors related to the use of another suffix ‘–dik’ are presented below. It was seen that the students almost forgot about the ending after this suffix. Moreover, they confuse the use of this suffix with the suffix –an. The results are shown below.

Table 3. Statistical findings related to the use of two types of suffixes and endings.

We can see that the vast majority of students made mistakes when recognizing and using the suffix. This -dik suffix is often difficult to recognize as it has so many forms due to Vowel Harmony operating in its internal vowel, and Consonant Mutation operating on both the initial -dand the terminal –k. The dik, -duk, -dık, -dük Participle is subject to both Vowel Harmony and Consonant Mutation Rules. .So you can find -tik, -tuk, -tık, tük. If a further suffix with a vowel is added the the final -k is also subject to Consonant Mutation: -diği, -duğu, -dığı, -düğü or -tiği, -

tuğu, -tığı, -tüğü.

For example:

bulmak to find – Bulduğum şapka The hat which I found.

seçmek to choose – Seçtiğin kitap -

The book that you are choosing/ chose

görmek to see – Gördüğü araba The car that he sees/saw

Mostly the students make mistakes concerning this suffix when translating sentences. They either use another suffix or a wrong ending. For example:

When students were asked to combine sentences using relative clauses, they sometimes failed to place the relative clause in the students.

As a result of this study, it has been found out that the main reasons for the errors in using Turkish relative clause system were concerning the complexity of the subject due to the fact that Russian does not have the same relative clause system as in Turkish. The influence of the first language brings many other problems such as errors in word order, errors in choice of suffixes, errors in defining the doer of an action, errors in the meaning of clauses, errors in translation, etc.

Teachers of Turkish can benefit from these findings in many ways. The common errors show the way to be treated when their sources are identified correctly. The errors tell the teachers how far towards the goal the learners have progressed and what remains for them to learn [3]. Following the students' progress, the teachers are able to carry on their studies in accordance with what the learner needs to know and what part of the teaching strategy to change or reconstruct.

Classifying the sources of errors in the use of relative clauses will provide the teacher with an approach or a plan for an order in the process of using the relative clause system appropriately. Therefore, errors are a means of feedback for the teachers reflecting how effective they are in their teaching style and what changes they have to make to get higher performance from their students.

Additionally, it is clear from the findings that it is of crucial importance to draw the attention of the students to the structural and semantic differences between the two languages.

Keeping the influence of the first language and the linguistic structure of the target language in mind, problems can be coped with the collective study of the teachers and the sentence correctly. Besides, when translating sentences from Turkish into Russian the students could not understand clearly what was stated in the sentences with relative clauses.

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