Abstract
THE APPEARANCE OF MENTAL VERBS IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: THE CASE OF ANOOSHIRVAN MIANDJI
The current study aims to examine the use of mental verbs in nine works of children's literature by This study aims to examine the use of mental verbs in nine children's literature works by Anooshirvan Miandji, known for his children's books with philosophical subtexts, using content analysis. The research aims to fill a gap in the literature by examining the use of mental verbs specifically in contemporary children's literature. Thus, it aims to contribute to the classification of mental verbs in the literature. A quantitative research method was adopted in the study, and data were collected through document analysis. A total of 3,665 mental verbs were identified from 8,793 inflected verbs and categorized using a four-part classification (sense, emotion, memory-reasoning, explanation). The findings show that mental verbs account for 41.68% of all verbs. The most frequent type of mental verb was memory and reasoning verbs with 1,374 examples, followed by explanation verbs with 1,041 verbs, emotion verbs with 887 verbs, and sense verbs with 363 verbs. The most frequently used individual verbs were, in order, de- (600), iste- (245), sor- (210), bil- (208), and düşün- (130). When examining emotion verbs, positive emotions (604) were found to be more dominant than negative (157) and neutral (126) emotions. In conclusion, the predominance of reasoning and explanatory verbs in Miandji's works has been linked to the author's philosophical background and the aim of teaching children critical thinking skills. These findings contribute to the understanding of the linguistic and cognitive dimensions of children's literature texts and reveal the alignment of the author's language choices with the pedagogical goals of the works.
Keywords
Mental Verbs, Children literature, Anooshirvan Miandji, Perception verbs, emotion verbs.