A DATA-BASED RESEARCH ON CONCEPTUALIZATION

The purpose of this research is to discuss the conceptualization theory and approaches on the basis of linguistic data which were obtained from children at the age of 10 and 13. From this point of view, in the study, first, the concepts were handled in terms of cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology and then, classical, prototype-based, theory-based and atomistic approaches were discussed. In the study which is qualitative, data were collected from the participants in order to determine the prototypes, features and lexical varieties of the concepts. The research group, from whom data were collected, was composed of 4th and 7th grade students of five elementary schools in four different cities in Turkey. In the data collection stage, three open ended-short answered survey forms related to the five representatively chosen concepts were used and a database of 28.183 words was formed with the collected data. In the analysis of the data, content analysis and descriptive analysis were used. The findings of the research demonstrated that typicality and family resemblance relation plays a significant role in conceptualization; however examples, attitude, collocation and scripting based associations come to the forefront while expressing the features of the concepts and using the concepts linguistically. This case indicates that the participant children have a conceptualization structure patterned with associations. With the obtained data, it can be regarded that there are prototypical effects; maybe some definitions need to be added; moreover, all kinds of personal and cultural knowledge is added to the concepts. This implies that all descriptive knowledge types are united with concepts. Accordingly, all these knowledge are considered as collateral, but it is hard to say that they are the constituents of the concept.