Analyzing contributions of the riddles to the development of children’s domains as social course materials: Konya sample

Abstract

Rhyming folk narratives like riddles, jingles, lullabies and anecdotes can be considered as an endless socio-cultural treasure for children. Children can acquire phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, which are the universal elements of language, starting from the very first day of their childhood, as verbal in their middle childhood and both verbal and written form of them in their late childhood unconsciously in the context of the folk narratives, which are mile stones of mother tongue acquisition. Thanks to the folk narratives which are social learning materials, children start to acquire and speak Turkish as mother tongue in social context effectively. In this research, first, description and classification of the riddles are done later, the effects of the riddles in the language development of the children are handled and last, 86 riddles belonging to Konya around are collected by interview.