Learners' awareness levels of linguistic redundancy and pleonasm in teaching Turkish as a foreign language

The aim of this study is to analyze how and why the linguistic phenomenon studied in the Western body of literature under the expressions like expletives, linguistic redundancy, and pleonasm, linguistic excess, dummies, etc. emerge. The linguistic phenomenon in question is addressed as 'linguistic redundancy and pleonasm' in the study and it makes some recommendations on teaching Turkish as a second language. At this point, the study equally concerns the specific areas of linguistics and the productive language skills at the point of language learning. The research tries to reveal how the linguistic phenomenon occurs on the axis of both. The study was patterned in case study form which is one of the qualitative research patterns and the data obtained was analyzed with descriptive and content analysis. The study group of the study consists of 12 foreign students learning Turkish at the B1 level at Sakarya University Turkish Language Teaching, Application and Research Center. The data was collected using a written application paper related to the subject, semi-structured interview, and observation forms developed by the researcher. According to the results, in all the linguistic fields specified within the conceptual framework of the study, it has been observed that contexts that can include linguistic redundancy and pleonasm in addition to excess communication elements may occur. For instance, in terms of morphology concerning diachrony and coexistence instances of linguistic redundancy and pleonasm may be encountered in unnecessary use of plural suffixes marked after nouns, some situations where the complementary verb is used in everyday language, plurality in formulaic expressions and reduplications, plural suffixes marked after the words used for expressing uncertainty or intensity, plural suffixes at the end of greeting expressions. Linguistically redundant forms in syntax were more relatively found in the cases when the meaning of a word in a sentence is the same as in the modal, in cases containing the use of the Turkish words 'tane' and 'doğru' and in cases where the meaning in the word and the meaning in the verb conjugation are the same. According to the answers of the participants, it has been specified that syntactic redundancy and pleonasm can be detected more easily than morphological ones and that the participants were fairly less able to realize morphological redundancies in contrast with others. The largest categories which were dealt with under the linguistic redundancy and pleonasms in the semantic field within the body of the conceptual framework of the study were specified as the use of cliches and tautologies. The species most easily identified by the participants in this area fillers, successive use of synonyms, one of which is borrowed word, the sequential use of synonymous idioms, and the unnecessary use of synonyms. In the study results, it was seen that the most common redundant and pleonastic answers in the field of pragmatics emerged in categories like indicative and enforcement categories. In lexicological categories, the most common pleonastic answers were detected to have emerged in the use for both semantical and functional categories The factors causing the pleonastic and redundant factors in the related linguistic fields included in the study were also specified. It is predicted that the results of the study will contribute to the awareness of instructors about productive language skills in teaching Turkish as a foreign language despite the use that emerges within the scope of linguistic excess and pleonasm. Moreover, based on the results, it is considered that the study will provide a basis for a relevant future body of literature studies about how and which factors the discourse of learners are affected by leaving the scope of ambiguity in the teaching of the aforementioned linguistic phenomenon in prescriptive grammar teaching.