Turkish Children’s Creation of New Words in Coining Agent and Instrument Nouns

Abstract

This study aims to find out the occurrences of innovative word formations in Turkish speaking children. The data was collected from 20 children with similar socio-economic background aged between 3 and 6 years through picture elicitation technique. The children were presented with agent and instrument pictures and requested to denominate them. On the basis of data analysis, it was observed that the findings partially correlate with the assumptions put forward by (Clark, 1981). Moreover, other than conventional lexical innovation strategies, compounding and derivation, the children in the present study made use of three other word formation strategies namely, substitution, made-up words and abbreviation.