The accessibility of the depth of Turkish relative clauses by Turkish monolingual children from 2 to 9 years of age

This study investigates the comprehension and production of Relative Clauses (henceforward RC) structures by monolingual Turkish speaking children from 2 to 9-year-olds. Participants of this study were 150 children, and 10 adults took part in the study as the normative group. The aim of this study is to reveal the order and depth of RCs in children's development and to find out the most complex structure of RCs children can comprehend or produce within the determined age groups. This is a descriptive study and the data were obtained from participants concerning their current status. A piloting was conducted before the real experiment to check the feasibility of the study. As the data collection tools, pictures were presented to participants for each depth together with a relevant scenario. All responses were video/audio recorded and the recorded data were transcribed on a word document. Results showed that children can comprehend RC structures as early as 2-year-old and they start producing RCs at the age of 3 and the rate of production increased with the age. The production of RCs stabilized between ages 6 to 8. Lastly, at the age of 9, the proportion of RC production decreased suddenly. The findings of this study confirm that comprehension and production of RCs require cognitive maturity, knowledge of usage of the language and time to internalize that knowledge.