A Study on the Usage of Verb’s Complements with Cases by French Bilingual Somalian Students Learning Turkish as a Foreign Language

An important part of the grammatical proficiency of students learning Turkish as a foreign language is the use of verb complements in terms of case suffixes used with verbs. The suffixes that determine the relations between nouns and verbs that make up the two main word categories of Turkish are case suffixes. Noun case suffixes, whose main function is to connect nouns to verbs, are one of the most difficult subjects for students learning Turkish as a foreign language. However, there are few studies on teaching noun case suffixes to foreign students. The aim of this study, which was prepared based on the deficiency in the relevant literature, is to determine the usage levels of noun case suffixes in the oral expressions of French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish. The study group of the research consists of 25 Somalian students studying at the B1, B2 and C1 levels at Bursa Uludag University Turkish Teaching Center in the 2019-2020 academic year and voluntarily participated in this research. The data obtained within the scope of this research, which was designed as a qualitative case study, were analyzed according to the suffix category that provides the relationship between the noun case suffixes and the verbs in the sentence. Other functions of the noun case suffix that provide the connection between nouns and nouns, nouns and prepositions are excluded from the scope of the study. The research data obtained by the semi-structured interview technique were analyzed using frequency analysis, which is one of the sub-techniques of content analysis. As a result of the study, it was determined that 25 French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish made mistakes at a rate of about half when using the verbs with case suffixes, and they used the nominative case with the least mistakes.


Introduction
Turkish, which has an agglutinative language structure, has a very large and important share in the formation of words and in the operation of the language by using affixes. They are official forms that establish temporary meaning relations between words (Korkmaz, 2003, pp. 15-16) and they are language units that combine with roots and expand them into stems and reinforce them to express various situations and shapes (Ergin, 2005, p. 115). In the functioning of the language, affixes have an important place in terms of the meaning relations they establish between the words in the sentence, as well as giving functionality to the words they are added to. Thus, in order to understand the relationships between the nouns and verbs that make up the two main word categories of the language, and therefore the meanings of the sentences, it is necessary to know the affixes system. The suffixes that determine the relations between nouns and verbs in Turkish are case suffixes. "Case suffixes whose main function is to bind the name to the action; they are attached to the actions that follow them in order to perform functions such as showing the direction, staying, leaving the place of the work, formation, situation, and the unit under its influence" (Üstünova, 2008, p. 60). It is important for a target audience learning Turkish as a foreign language to understand the relationship between verbs and nouns and to comprehend case suffixes in order to use their Turkish comprehension and expression skills effectively (Çangal & Başar, 2018, p. 157).

Literature Review
Studies on teaching Turkish as a foreign language show that foreign students learning Turkish have difficulty in ies.ccsenet.org International Education Studies Vol. 15, No. 2; learning the use of verb's complements with cases. In the literature it can be observed the book of Nurlu et al. (2017), and master thesis of Özkan (1992), Akdoğan (1993), Öz (2002), Güven (2007), Yıldırım (2011), Msakhuradze (2019), İpek (2020), and research articles of Melanlıoğlu (2012), Yılmaz and Temiz (2015), Demirci and Dinçaslan (2016), Sakallı (2016), Güler and Eyüp (2016), Çangal and Başar (2018), Barcın (2019),  In these studies, the errors detected in the teaching and learning of verb's complements with cases are generally emphasized. Nurlu et al. (2017) focused on the complementary case suffixes of the words that are associated with verbs in order for foreigners learning Turkish to form correct sentences and speak. In the work, the meanings of the verbs that are used frequently in Turkey Turkish are explained and the complements with cases requested by the verb are shown and examples are given. Özkan (1992) made determinations about the case suffixes errors that foreigners make while learning Turkish and made evaluations about the method of giving the subject and the points that need to be emphasized. Akdoğan (1993) identified the mistakes that students frequently make about the noun case and conjugation of noun case suffixes in Turkish learning of foreigners, and made suggestions by listing the reasons for these mistakes. Öz (2002) gives the information that the case suffixes that the nouns will take as the complement of the verbs in teaching Turkish as a foreign language are determined by the effect of the verb, and presents a curriculum proposal by emphasizing that this issue should be taken into consideration in the teaching of these suffixes. Güven (2007) determined what kind of mistakes international students who learn Turkish make in using verb's complements with cases, what causes these mistakes, and made suggestions about how to teach case suffixes. Yıldırım (2011) applied an evaluation study on noun case suffixes to students learning Turkish at the primary level (A1-A2). As a result of the application, the errors made by the students regarding the use of the noun case suffixes were examined, interviews were made with the students, and at the end, opinions about the reasons for these errors were given.
Another study was revealed by Msakhuradze (2019). In this study, the mistakes made about the noun cases in the written expression papers of the Georgian students learning Turkish were determined. The mistakes were grouped separately according to their noun cases; it has been tried to determine the causes of these mistakes to offer solutions for teaching.
İpek (2020) also examined the success levels of Somalian students in writing skills, their anxiety levels towards writing skills and grammatical errors, and found that one-third of the grammatical errors made by Somalian students in writing skills were morphological errors. It has been determined that the most common mistakes in morphology mistakes of Somalian students are noun case suffixes. Melanlıoğlu (2012) conducted interviews in order to determine the opinions and experiences of teachers teaching Turkish to foreigners regarding the problems they experienced during the teaching of case suffixes, and made various determinations and suggestions based on this. Yılmaz and Temiz (2015) focused on the problem of noun case suffixes that emerged during the teaching of Turkish as a foreign language, and made determinations about the causes of the problem. They tried to find solutions to the problems experienced by foreign students in learning within the framework of activities such as and the use of noun case suffixes to fill in the blanks, question-answer, concept map, etc.
Demirci and Dinçaslan (2016) applied the activities they prepared to teach the verbs commonly used in Turkish and the suffixes of these verbs to Syrian students, and they found out what kind of mistakes they made in which verbs and suggested solutions.
Sakallı (2016) examined how case suffixes were handled in the books prepared for teaching Turkish to foreigners and presented new ideas about the teaching of case suffixes in his article on the differences in the teaching of case suffixes to students of Turkish descent and non-Turkish descent. Güler and Eyüp (2016) examined the written expression papers of foreign students in terms of the use of case suffixes. As a result of the study, they determined which case suffixes the students used more frequently or less, and which case suffixes made more mistakes and made some suggestions. Çangal and Başar (2018) also focused on the teaching of side functions in teaching case suffixes to students learning Turkish, based on the idea that "as the meaning of the verb changes, the case suffixes it takes also change". They found that when case suffixes are taught in most Turkish teaching sets, only one of the verbs' meanings is given with complements cases and their connotations are not mentioned. Barcın (2019) examined the written expression papers of Kyrgyz students in order to measure the usage proficiency of the basic level suffixes, and made various determinations and suggestions based on the data ies.ccsenet.org International Vol. 15, No. 2; obtained.  examined the written expression papers of Arab students learning Turkish in terms of morphological errors and tried to determine the frequency level of these errors according to verbs.
When the data obtained from the studies on the subject are examined, it has been determined that the researches on teaching the noun case suffixes in general concentrate on written documents, and also the relationship of the noun case suffixes with the verb as a binding element is not sufficiently emphasized. Based on this determination and the idea of making a different contribution to the field, in this study, the oral expressions of foreign students learning Turkish, which had not been focused on before, were discussed. In addition, the relationship between the noun case suffixes and the verb as a binding element, which was superficially emphasized in previous studies on the subject, was tried to be detailed.

Verb's Complement with Cases/Noun case suffixes
In Turkish grammar books, glossaries and related articles in the literature, it is seen that different classifications have emerged regarding the number and naming of noun case suffixes, which are described as verb's complements with cases.
In Turkish, the case is defined as the situation in which the complements related to the verb connect directly to it. During this connection sometimes without suffixes, and often with the help of suffixes, case conjugation is performed (Buran, 1996, p. 296). Korkmaz (2014, p. 112) defined these suffixes as suffixes to show the case. Korkmaz (2014, p. 112) also states that these suffixes are suffixes that meet the situations in which the nouns are entered in order to establish the temporary meaning bonds between the nouns and the verbs in the sentence.
On this subject, Aksan (2003, p. 92) states that "The noun case is the concept of case that determines the task of nouns and some other noun elements in the order of the sentence, shows the role of the noun in the sentence in terms of syntax and its relationship with other elements, and also gives it a certain feature in terms of meaning. In most languages, it denotes the change in form and inflection of nouns." Timurtaş evaluates the noun cases as "genitive, dative, accusative, locative, ablative, equative, directive, instrumental suffixes" (Timurtaş, 1994, pp. 68-75). Ergin (2005, p. 226) states that "the cases of the noun are the grammatical function in which the noun is in relation to other words, and the noun expresses these relations sometimes without a suffix, but often as an addition". In addition, Ergin (2005, p. 226) explains the noun cases as follows: "These suffixes that put the nouns in various situations for various relations are called case suffixes". Ergin (2005, p. 227) also states that "case suffixes are essentially suffixes that connect the noun to the verb. With this feature, the main inflectional suffixes are case suffixes" Ergin (2005, pp. 227-229) accepts the case suffixes as "nominative (lean case), genitive (interest), accusative (doing case), dative (approaching case), locative (being present), ablative (detachment)", instrumental (vehicle status), equative (equality status), and directive (direction status). Ediskun (1990, pp. 110-113) stated that nouns are either simple in sentences, depending on their functions or generally related to verbs, or they take one of the inflectional suffixes +I, +A, +DA, +DAn. Bilgegil (1984, p. 125), on the other hand, classified the noun cases in five different categories as "nominative, +I, +A, +DA, +DAn". Gencan (1975, p. 136) also describes the status of nouns; nominative, +I state, +A state, +DA state, +Dan state.
In Yedi Iklim Turkish A1 (2015), which is used as the basic textbook by French bilingual Somalian students who make up the research group and who have completed their Turkish education as a foreign language at Bursa Uludağ University Turkish Teaching Center, the case suffixes of the verbs are "nominative case, accusative (+I), dative (+A), locative (+DA) and ablative case (+DAn).
Based on all these data, there is no unity in terms of case suffixes of Turkish verbs, either in terminology or in categorizing case suffixes. In this study, the classification in Yedi İklim Turkish A1 (2015) was preferred in terms of both the learning status of the students forming the research group and the compatibility with the terminology corresponding to international terms.

Research Question
Based on the information above, this study examines the following research question: "What is the situation in the use of verb's complement with cases in the verbal expressions of French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish as a foreign language at B1, B2, and C1 levels?".
There is no study on the use of verb's complement with cases by Somalians who learn Turkish as a foreign ies.ccsenet.org International Vol. 15, No. 2; language. However, in recent years, French bilingual Somalian students constitute a significant part of the foreign students who have come to Turkey for education -increasingly-day by day. For this reason, there is a need for more detailed studies on the verbs and noun suffixes usage levels of French bilingual Somalian students who learn Turkish as a foreign language. This need constitutes the importance and focus of the present study.

Research Design
The present study was designed as a qualitative case study. A case study is a methodological approach that involves in-depth examination of a limited system using multiple data collection to gather systematic information about how it works and works (Chmiliar, 2010). With the results obtained, it reveals why the event occurred in that way and what should be focused on in future studies (Davey, 1991). A qualitative case study design was chosen in this study, which aims to determine the case regarding the use of verb's compliment cases in the oral expressions of French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish as a foreign language at B1, B2 and C1 levels.

Participants
The sample of this research is 25 Somalian students who have completed their B1, B2 and C1 level Turkish education at Bursa Uludağ University Turkish Teaching Center in the 2019-2020 academic year, and who are still studying at different faculties and colleges of Bursa Uludağ University and voluntarily participated in this research.

Data Collection and Analysis
The basic data of the research are the audio recordings of the French bilingual Somalian students who learn Turkish as a foreign language, and the audio was recorded during the semi-structured interview. These recordings were examined within the scope of the research.
During the research process, firstly, the students were interviewed face to face and they were asked to talk on ten different topics and their conversations were recorded. These audio recordings taken from the students were then transcribed by using computers.
In the second step of the research, in order to analyze and evaluate the data obtained from the audio recordings, the correct/incorrect usage levels of the determined verbs were examined. In this study, the noun case suffixes that the students take as complementary to the conjugated verbs in their oral expressions were determined, and the examples that were used correctly and made mistakes were listed. Afterwards, a list of the verbs with correct complementary case suffixes and the verbs with complementary errors were made. In the examination of the wrong sentences, the verb, the type of error (reduction error, addition error, substitution error), the case suffix that the verb should take and the wrongly used case suffix were determined in the same order.
In the third step of the research, frequency analysis, which is one of the sub-techniques of content analysis, was used. Content analysis allows us to identify certain words or concepts in a text or set of texts (Büyüköztürk, Çakmak, Akgün, Karadeniz, & Demirel, 2016, p. 250). Frequency analysis, in its simplest form, reveals the frequency of units or items that appear in numerical, percentage and proportional ways (Bilgin, 2014, p. 18). Thus, researchers can determine the existence, frequency, meaning and relationships of certain units and explain their importance and effects (Bilgin, 2014;Büyüköztürk et al., 2016;cited in Dolunay & Karabuğa, 2020, p. 1876. The data obtained within the scope of this study were analyzed according to the category of suffixes that provide the relationship between nouns and verbs in the sentence. Other functions of noun case suffixes that provide the connection between nouns and nouns, nouns and prepositions are excluded from the scope of the study. The findings show the correct and incorrect usage levels of verb's complementary case suffixes by Somalian students learning Turkish.

Results
It is seen that French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish use 531 different verbs in their oral expressions. Among these verbs, 278 verbs (52.35%) were used with correct complements, while 253 verbs (47.65%) were used incorrectly with false compliments. Accordingly, French bilingual Somalian French bilingual students make mistakes at a rate of about half when using verbs with their complements.

Levels of Use of Verbs with Correct Complements by French Bilingual Somalian Students Learning Turkish
When the case suffixes of the verbs used with correct complements in the verbal expressions of the Somalian students are examined, the verbs used in the nominative case are in the first place. French bilingual Somalian students use the nominative complements of Turkish verbs correctly at a rate of 38%. The case that Somalian students can use with the least accuracy is the ablative case.

The Use of Verbs with Wrong Complements by French Bilingual Somalian Students Learning Turkish
It is seen that Somalian students who learn Turkish as a foreign language make errors at a rate of nearly half (47.65%) when using verbs with case complements. Somalian students make three kinds of mistakes when using verbs with wrong complements. These are subtraction, substitution, and addition errors.

Types of Errors in the Use of Verbs with Wrong Complements by French Bilingual Somalian Students Learning Turkish
When the distribution of the complements that Somalian students use incorrectly in their oral expressions according to the error types is examined, it is seen that the most common error type is subtraction, with 450 errors out of a total of 823 errors. In their oral expressions, they often make the mistake of omitting by not using the case suffix.
The most common type of error after subtraction is substituting the complement with 327 times. Somalian students made mistakes by changing the complement of the verb in 327 of 823 incorrect uses of case suffixes.
The least common type of error made by the Somalian students in the use of the complement is the addition error. Somalian students also make additions by using case suffixes in the verbs that should be used without any case suffix in 46 of 823 incorrect sentences.  When French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish are observed, it is seen that they make a subtraction error by not using any case suffixes in 62.14% of the verbs that should have a case suffix. It has been determined that instead of the dative case suffix, the accusative suffix with 27.68% is used. Somalian students make the error of substituting the verbs that should have an accusative case suffix by adding a dative case suffix. Afterwards, the locative suffix was used in 22 of the case suffixes errors, and the ablative case suffix was used in 5, respectively. Considering the use of the dative case suffix, which has the second place in errors that Somalian students learning Turkish make most in their oral expressions, it is understood that 168 of 285 incorrect usages were made by not using the dative case suffix (subtraction). On the other hand, the locative suffix was used 71 times instead of the dative case suffix, thus a change error was performed. Somalian students confuse these two case suffixes by using the locative suffix instead of the dative case suffix. Again, instead of the dative case suffix, the accusative case suffix of 43 times (14.47%), and the ablative case suffix, 3 times (1.03%) were used incorrectly.  Vol. 15, No. 2; using the dative case suffix. Somalian students usually make the mistake of subtraction when using verbs that take their complement with the ablative case suffix. In addition, when they make a substitution mistake, they mostly confuse the ablative case suffix with the locative case suffix. Somalian students learning Turkish make the mistake of adding the case suffixes to the nouns that should be used in the nominative form, by adding the most common (31.58%), dative (31.58%), locative 28.95%) and ablative case suffixes (7.89%).

Conclusion
The data obtained from this study show that French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish have difficulties in the relationship between verbs and complements and cannot reflect these relationships in their oral expressions at the desired level. It is seen that the findings obtained from the study also overlap with the findings of other studies in the literature. İpek (2020), in his study examining the success levels of Somalian students in writing skills, their anxiety levels towards writing skills and grammatical errors, determined that 37.6% of the grammatical errors made in writing skills were morphological errors. He determined that the most common mistakes in morphology errors were case suffixes. In addition, Islıoğlu (2014) and Önder (2017) found that the grammar subject that foreign students make the most mistakes is noun case suffixes.
In the verbal expressions of French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish, the majority of the examples of noun case suffixes that do not make mistakes in terms of verb complement relationship are verbs used in the nominative case. In the distribution of the verbs with the complement error according to the cases, the least mistakes were made was in the nominative case. This result reveals that Somalian students are successful in using the nominative case.
When the findings of the verbs that the French bilingual Somalian students who learn Turkish make mistakes in terms of verb-completive relationship, the main verbs with the most mistakes are go-(f=37), come-(f=31), start-(f=20), do-(f= 20), love-(f=19), take-(f=18), think-(f=18), speak-(f=18), give-(f=18), see-(f=17) acts like. These verbs are the verbs of the basic vocabulary that are frequently used in daily life. This shows that Somali students make mistakes in using noun suffixes even in the most frequently used verbs in their oral narratives. These findings seem to overlap with other studies in the literature İpek, 2020) When the findings of the mistakes in the use of case suffixes of verbs in the verbal expressions of the students learning Turkish were examined, it was seen that they made three types of mistakes: subtraction, substitution, and addition. Among these errors, the most common error type (f=450, 54.68%) is subtraction error. Somalian students mostly do not use the case suffix that the verb should take in sentences where they use the complements incorrectly. This result also coincides with the proportion of noun case suffixes in verb sentences with correct complements and shows that Somalian students generally tend not to use noun case suffixes in their oral expressions. The suffixes used most frequently and with the least mistakes by French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish are the accusative case suffix (f=345, 41.91%), the dative case suffix (f=285, 34.63%), the locative case suffix (f= 107, 13.00%), ablative case suffix (f=48, 5.84%) and nominative case suffix (f=38, 4.62%).
The reason for the mistakes made by French bilingual Somalian students learning Turkish in the use of case suffixes is actually the confusion of case suffixes that verbs have taken. This is due to the fact that the case suffixed complements of verbs differ in each language (Doğan, 2011;Özkan, 2018;İpek, 2020). There are four categories of cases in the Somalian: absolutive, nominative, genitive, and vocative. These structures are usually marked by intonation, sometimes with various suffixes (Kirk, 1905;Bell, 1969;Warner, 1985;Saeed, 1993 as cited in İpek, 2020). However, it differs from Turkish with the use of suffix in the nominative case (İpek, 2020, p. 111).
The findings of this study reveal that more comprehensive studies are needed for teaching Turkish as a foreign language. However, there is a need for comparative error analysis studies that deal with the findings with an analytical approach. In order to resolve the morphological usage problems of international students, comparative studies should also be carried out involving students speaking languages from different language families and different cultures and students speaking languages from the same language family and culture. Such research findings will contribute to the development of various teaching materials and future research on the subject, as well as facilitating the teaching of Turkish as a foreign language.