Neurolinguistic & psycholinguistic investigations on evidentiality in Turkish

4.3.4.
 
Summary of results
The Turkish heritage speakers investigated in the current study were less 
accurate and slower in their responses to both the evidentiality and time-
reference violations than Turkish monolinguals. The heritage speakers did 

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not differ in their responses to the violations of the direct- and indirect-
evidential verb forms. However, the monolinguals responded with longer 
RTs to the violations by a direct evidential than to the violations by an 
indirect evidential. Furthermore, the heritage speakers frequently judged the 
non-violated sentences with evidentiality to be ungrammatical more often 
than monolinguals did. The heritage speakers performed both less 
accurately and more slowly on the evidentiality violations than on the time-
reference violations. The monolinguals showed the opposite pattern: They 
had longer RTs but more accurate responses to the time-reference violations 
than to the evidentiality violations.
4.4.
 
Discussion and conclusions 
Results from this study provide us with further insights into online 
processing of evidentiality and time reference in Turkish heritage speakers. 
We sought to answer two main questions. The first was whether the heritage 
speakers differ in their processing of the evidentiality and time-reference 
violations from the monolinguals. The second question was whether there 
are differences in the heritage speakers’ sensitivity to the evidentiality and 
time-reference violations.
With regard to the first question, our findings confirmed that the 
heritage speakers were at a disadvantage compared to the monolinguals 
when processing both evidentiality and time-reference violations. The 
heritage speakers demonstrated a reduced sensitivity to both the 
evidentiality and time-reference violations, which was shown by their lower 
accuracy and longer RTs than the monolinguals. Regarding the second 
question, an asymmetry was found in the heritage speakers’ online 
processing of the evidentiality and time-reference violations. The heritage 
speakers were less sensitive to evidentiality violations than to time-
reference violations, as evidenced by both their response-accuracies and 
RTs. The monolinguals had longer RTs (but more accurate responses) to the 
time-reference violations than to the evidentiality violations.

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