This study addresses the question of the mental representation and processing of language by investigating &ldquo / structural priming&rdquo / in Turkish Genitive-Possessive (GEN-POSS) constructions. Structural priming is the facilitating effect of having already experienced a structural form on its subsequent processing. We investigate this phenomenon on a construction pair in Turkish, which shares the same external GEN-POSS morpho-syntactic template despite having distinct grammatical categories. The structures under scrutiny are possessive noun phrases (e.g. &ldquo / Korsan, [prenses-in(GEN) &ouml / yk&uuml / -s&uuml / n(POSS.3SG)]-&uuml / hatirladi.&rdquo / which means: The pirate remembered [the princess&rsquo / s story].) and embedded noun clauses with nominalized verbs as predicates (e.g. &ldquo / Korsan, [prenses-in(GEN) g&uuml / l-d&uuml / g(VN)-&uuml / n(POSS.3SG)]-&uuml / hatirladi.&rdquo / which means: The pirate remembered [that the princess (had) laughed/was laughing].) The results of the study which consists of a series of production and comprehension experiments with various methodologies (written sentence completion, self-paced reading and eye-tracking) indicate that structural priming might access the morphosyntactic level of representation in Turkish. Priming seems sensitive to the distinction between the phrasal vs. clausal nature of structures. During the processing of GEN-POSS constructions, the grammatical information regarding the constituents is accessed. Complex forms are further decomposed if processing resources are available. Overall, language production and comprehension seem to operate on the same structural representations but through different mechanisms. In addition, the study also contributes to the understanding of structural priming as a methodological paradigm and to the establishment of a bridge between the processing and theoretical linguistic analysis of Turkish nominalized verbs. To conclude, this study pioneers in exploring structural priming in Turkish and opens way to future research in this line.

Noun clauses are grammatical constructions that are of relevance both to typical language development and impaired language development. These clauses have been part of published techniques for the clinical analysis of language samples, and computer software for the automated analysis of clinical language samples has attempted to identify noun clauses, with limited success. The present study examined the development and clinical use of noun clauses as well as the automated identification of these clauses. Two sets of language samples were examined. One set consisted of 10 children with specific language impairment (SLI) whose age ranged from 7;6 to 11;1 (years;months), 10 peers matched for language development equivalence, and 10 peers matched for chronological age. The second set of samples were from 30 children considered to be typically developing, who ranged in age from 2;6 to 7;11. Language sample utterances were manually coded for the presence of noun clauses (including wh- noun clauses, that- noun clauses, and gerunds.) Samples were then automatically tagged using software. Results were tabulated and compared for accuracy. ANCOVA revealed that differences in the frequencies of WH-infinitive noun clauses and gerunds were significant between the matched groups. "Zero that clauses" (that-noun clauses containing no subordinator that) and gerunds were significantly correlated with age. Kappa levels revealed that agreement between manual and automated coding was high on WH-infinitive clauses, gerunds, and finite wh-noun clauses.