- Linguistics, Turkish Linguistics, Multilingualism, Bilingualism, Contrastive Linguistics, Clause combining, and 79 moreNominalization, Subordination, Embedded Wh-constructions, Wh-movement, Argument Structure, Ezafe Constructions, Impersonality, Impersonal Constructions, Discourse Analysis, Impersonal Passive, Receptive multilingualism, Discourse particles, Language contact, Fieldwork in linguistics, Turkish Corpus Linguistics, Information Structure, Functional Morphology, Kurdish Language, Iranian Languages, Comparative Linguistics, Functional Pragmatics, Syntax-Semantics Interface, Syntax, Formal syntax, Morphology and Syntax, Generative Syntax, Historical Syntax, French syntax, Minimalist Syntax, Minimalism, Minorities in Turkey, French linguistics, Indo-Iranian Linguistics, Laz Language, Morphology, German Linguistics, Clitics, Laz-Turkish language contact, Morphology (Languages And Linguistics), Language Acquisition, Kurdish Studies, Diachronic Linguistics (Or Historical Linguistics), Universal grammar, Persian, Albanian Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Open Access Books in Linguistics, Language Variation and Change, Kartvelian Languages, Connectivity, Deixis, Spatial deixis, Interpersonal Deixis, Anaphora, Anaphora Resolution, Anaphors, Feature Theory, Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma., Intergenerational Transmission, Intergenerational Transmission of Education, Minority Languages, Endangered Languages, Zazaki, Zazaki, Dimili Studies, Zazaki Studies, Neo-Aramaic, Armenian Language, Linguistic Typology, Demonstratives, Pronouns, Ditransitive Verbs, Functional Linguistics, Language Typology, Contact Linguistics, Grammaticalization, Language Documentation, Persian Language, Kurmanji Kurdish, and Complex Predicatesedit
This study approaches the formal and functional characteristics of empirically occurring Turkish wh-constructions from two theoretical points of view, confronting UG/Minimalist syntactic theory with the action-based linguistic theory of... more
This study approaches the formal and functional characteristics of empirically occurring Turkish wh-constructions from two theoretical points of view, confronting UG/Minimalist syntactic theory with the action-based linguistic theory of Functional Pragmatics. The data are taken from a corpus that contains some 15,000 occurrences of Turkish wh-elements overall, categorised into 133 different types; the examples are chosen from a subcorpus of this overall corpus. The study has two central aims: the first is an investigation of the communicative contributions of wh-constructions in the structuring of spoken discourse together with an analysis of the formal means by which these contributions are realised. The study thus considers Turkish wh in a typological, or rather contrastive, perspective. The second aim is to comparatively evaluate two theories that so far have often been perceived as irreconcilable, with the focus on exploring ways of interrelating their respective analytical potentials in the examination of Turkish wh-constructions.
Research Interests:
This is a synchronic investigation of the transitional area between clausal and NP-level patterns of junction, based on a corpus of academic writings published in Kurmanji Kurdish. By ‘junction’ is meant the linking of distinct syntactic... more
This is a synchronic investigation of the transitional area between clausal and NP-level patterns of junction, based on a corpus of academic writings published in Kurmanji Kurdish. By ‘junction’ is meant the linking of distinct syntactic units, ranging from NP-internal to clausal (i.e. by subordinators). A number of junctors in Kurmanji are multi-word units that combine a noun with adpositions, case, ezafe, deixis, indefinite determiners, phoric expressions, quantifiers, wh, plural, as well as the semantically neutral complementizer ku, enabling junction at a variety of syntactic levels. Academic writing in general can be assumed to purposefully shift between nominal and clausal patterns: achieving impersonal concision vs. providing slots for verb arguments. The study focuses on lexical nouns with a temporal meaning: dem ‘time, period’, gav ‘moment, time, step’, wext ‘time, period, season’ and çax ‘time, age, period, era’, which can flexibly change roles between lexical noun and subordinating junctor.
Research Interests:
This paper investigates the marking of indirect experience in a corpus of conversations recorded in Turkish-German bilingual families. Based on children’s retellings of family stories, which necessitate a grammatical distinction between... more
This paper investigates the marking of indirect experience in a corpus of conversations recorded in Turkish-German bilingual families. Based on children’s retellings of family stories, which necessitate a grammatical distinction between personally experienced and narratively transmitted events, the paper combines a quantitative with a discourse-analyti¬cal approach. The quantitative analysis shows that the bilingual children use indirective markers considerably less than their monolingual peers. We present three case studies, analysing input, discourse establishment, speaker-hearer interaction, comprehension, and production of forms. These analyses show how, in talking about events that occurred a generation ago, the bilingual children use unmarked, neutral forms, creating situations of confusion for their adult interlocutors, with ensuing reactions. We argue that at the for¬mal, grammatical, level, all three children seem to follow their own system, unaffected by the adults’ formal ways, their hints and recastings.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Multilingualism, Language Variation and Change, Understanding, Turkish Linguistics, and 8 moreHeritage language studies, Evidentiality, Bilingualism and Multilingualism, Receptive multilingualism, Evidentiality,epistemic Modality, Temporality, Indirectivity, Turkish-German bilinguaism, and Retold Narratives
This study takes a corpus-driven approach based on a collection of contemporary novels and short stories in order to explore various options for realising ditransitive constructions in Kurmanji, discussing some phenomena that pose a... more
This study takes a corpus-driven approach based on a collection of contemporary novels and short stories in order to explore various options for realising ditransitive constructions in Kurmanji, discussing some phenomena that pose a challenge to clear categorisation. Semantically, “ditransitive constructions” can be defined as constructions expressing “three-participant events”, involving verbs with three participants, as often referrred to in typological literature: an agent, a theme and a recipient (or recipient-like) participant. Cross-linguistically typical instances are verbs of giving (e.g. dan in Kurmanji), showing (nîşan dan) and saying (gotin), as well as their contraries (pirsîn ‘ask’), and other semantically related verbs.
In an interplay between flagging, indexing and word order, Kurmanji reveals a rich formal repertoire that presents a number of challenges to systematisation. It makes use of several morphosyntactic devices, applied alternatively and generally in combination with oblique case: a postpredicative position, adpositional constructions, a verbal suffix indicating the presence of an indirect object, and light verb ezafe constructions that link an indirect object to the lexical nominal. The study aims at uncovering factors which determine the choice of a construction.
The use of formally identifiable ditransitive constructions, on the other hand, clearly transcends the original concept of a “physical transfer”, extending into non-animate, abstract and metaphorical contexts. Depending on the construction at hand, cognitive contents, images, landscapes, sounds, and other non-human core arguments may end up in an agentive role, while humans are frequently expressed as verb complements, particularly undergoers of a self-caused movement. Recipients, on the other hand, can be inanimate entities and even abstract ideas.
In an interplay between flagging, indexing and word order, Kurmanji reveals a rich formal repertoire that presents a number of challenges to systematisation. It makes use of several morphosyntactic devices, applied alternatively and generally in combination with oblique case: a postpredicative position, adpositional constructions, a verbal suffix indicating the presence of an indirect object, and light verb ezafe constructions that link an indirect object to the lexical nominal. The study aims at uncovering factors which determine the choice of a construction.
The use of formally identifiable ditransitive constructions, on the other hand, clearly transcends the original concept of a “physical transfer”, extending into non-animate, abstract and metaphorical contexts. Depending on the construction at hand, cognitive contents, images, landscapes, sounds, and other non-human core arguments may end up in an agentive role, while humans are frequently expressed as verb complements, particularly undergoers of a self-caused movement. Recipients, on the other hand, can be inanimate entities and even abstract ideas.
Research Interests: Corpus Linguistics, Morphosyntax, Indo-Iranian Linguistics, Morphology and Syntax, Kurdish Language, and 10 moreDitransitive Verbs, Adpositions, Light Verbs, Iranian Linguistics, Oblique Case, Kurmanji Kurdish, Circumpositions, Kurdish linguistics, Ditransitive constructions, and Postpredicative Position
This qualitative case study examines discourse-level phenomena of the unfolding of language-biographical memory in a Turkish narrative recorded in the Ruhr area in western Germany. Relating sociolinguistic with discourse-ana¬lytical... more
This qualitative case study examines discourse-level phenomena of the unfolding of language-biographical memory in a Turkish narrative recorded in the Ruhr area in western Germany. Relating sociolinguistic with discourse-ana¬lytical interests, it considers issues of language-biographical content in light of structural categories that describe the narrative process of language-bio¬graphical remembering. At the content level, the study is interested in a historical contextualisation of generation-specific Turkish-German multilingualism. At the structural level, the emergence of remembered content is studied in terms of discourse-level phenomena such as speaker deixis, body-relatedness, and interac¬tion with context – in a data-driven selection of categories. How does the narrator highlight the individual character of her experience? How does she present herself as an experiencing subject? How is she related to other experiencers in the situations at hand? How can her experience at the same time be read as a witnessing of sociolin¬guistically relevant historical scenes? How do details of her experience emerge as memory in the larger context of her narrative?
Research Interests:
Speakers of Kurmanji Kurdish can be said to traditionally be adaptive multilinguals. Kurmanji is spoken as a first language, as one of several first languages, and, depending on the societal situation, as a heritage language. In addition,... more
Speakers of Kurmanji Kurdish can be said to traditionally be adaptive multilinguals. Kurmanji is spoken as a first language, as one of several first languages, and, depending on the societal situation, as a heritage language. In addition, there is also a tradition of learning Kurmanji as a second language—e.g., with speakers of Zazaki/Dimliki and other languages. In recent decades, Kurmanji has become part of the multilingual soundscape of the western European diaspora, a situation that has given rise to new constellations of teaching and learning. This paper takes a qualitative look at how experienced multilingual speakers of Kurmanji adapt to the needs of learners of Kurmanji. In particular, I analyse how multilingual modes of conversation blend into informal teaching. The data are composed of field notes of participant observation as well as passages from recorded conversations.
Research Interests:
This paper investigates morphosyntactic, semantic and functional qualities of the complex verbal forms -mIşlIK and -mAzlIK in modern literary Turkish. It discusses their potential to serve as subordinators and explores the transitional... more
This paper investigates morphosyntactic, semantic and functional qualities of the complex verbal forms -mIşlIK and -mAzlIK in modern literary Turkish. It discusses their potential to serve as subordinators and explores the transitional zone between abstract nominalisation and “clausiness”, by using corpus-linguistic methodology. The results show that while these rarely used forms do have the capacity to expand into clause-like structures, they also reveal some categorially contradictory patterns. Morphosyntactically, the study attempts to rank the findings on a scale. It also looks at patterns of combinability of clausal with nominal categories. Semantically, the data reveal a tendency for these constructions to be employed in the expression of (passively undergone) negatively experienced states and to occur with matrix predicates that express emotional experience, nonverbal communication or actions and existing states, rather than explicit verbal or cognitive processing or evaluation.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper documents the empirical use of the Turkish temporal-deictic expression o zaman ‘then, in that case, at that time’ in narrative discourses by Turkish-German bilingual children, contrasting it against monolingual usages. The main... more
This paper documents the empirical use of the Turkish temporal-deictic expression
o zaman ‘then, in that case, at that time’ in narrative discourses by Turkish-German
bilingual children, contrasting it against monolingual usages. The main hypothesis is
that the procedural micro-structure of functional elements changes under the influence
of language contact and that such changes can be observed in discourse varieties
of Turkish spoken in Germany. The study conducts a functional-pragmatic comparison
of some exemplary uses of o zaman by analysing its communicative potential
in the constellations in which it occurs.
o zaman ‘then, in that case, at that time’ in narrative discourses by Turkish-German
bilingual children, contrasting it against monolingual usages. The main hypothesis is
that the procedural micro-structure of functional elements changes under the influence
of language contact and that such changes can be observed in discourse varieties
of Turkish spoken in Germany. The study conducts a functional-pragmatic comparison
of some exemplary uses of o zaman by analysing its communicative potential
in the constellations in which it occurs.
Research Interests:
The topic of the present paper is linguistic means for embedding complement clauses, which we cautiously refer to as “complementation markers”, in two Turkic languages: Turkish and Noghay. The aim is to describe the forms involved and to... more
The topic of the present paper is linguistic means for embedding complement clauses, which we cautiously refer to as “complementation markers”, in two Turkic languages: Turkish and Noghay. The aim is to describe the forms involved and to discuss their functions.
Research Interests:
This study explores the contribution of a specific type of modifier linking, the ‘ezafe’ in Kurmanji, to the internal (and external) connectivity of com-plexly modified NPs. More specifically, it examines interactions between ezafe and... more
This study explores the contribution of a specific type of modifier linking, the ‘ezafe’ in Kurmanji, to the internal (and external) connectivity of com-plexly modified NPs. More specifically, it examines interactions between ezafe and the marking of case and gender in hierarchically chained nominal attributive constructions as an area of potential complexity, investigating examples from academic writing in the humanities and social sciences pub-lished in Kurmanji Kurdish. The main goal is descriptive, involving the compilation of an inventory of constructions illustrative of the effects of these phenomena on the interpretation of hierarchically structured attributive chains.
Research Interests: Academic Writing, Iranian Studies, Kurdish Studies, Indo-Iranian Linguistics, Morphology (Languages And Linguistics), and 9 moreKurdish Language, Case Marking, Linguistic complexity, Iranian Linguistics, Nominal Modification, Gender Marking, Ezafe Constructions, Kurdish linguistics, and Linguistic Connectivity
This paper studies converbial clauses in monolingual and bilingual children’s Turkish, testing the hypothesis that language contact produces linguistic changes in specific grammatical domains.
Research Interests:
In this paper, I study the employment of the subordinating morpheme -DIK in Turkish by children roughly at preschool and school age. Comparing monolinguals growing up in Turkey with bilinguals growing up in Germany in a situation of... more
In this paper, I study the employment of the subordinating morpheme -DIK in Turkish by children roughly at preschool and school age. Comparing monolinguals growing up in Turkey with bilinguals growing up in Germany in a situation of immigration-related multilingualism, I investigate the effects of a bilingual development taking place in a largely monolingual societal and educational constellation by narrowing down on one specific grammatical area. Since this paper is aimed at bringing in a developmental and qualitative perspective, part of the investigation is realised in the form of three comparative case studies, in a first and incomplete attempt at working out individual profiles.
Research Interests:
The paper presents a methodology for empirical multilingual data analysis that combines quantitative and qualitative research. The data is a bilingual Turkish-German and a monolingual Turkish corpus of spoken child language. The... more
The paper presents a methodology for empirical multilingual data analysis that combines quantitative and qualitative research. The data is a bilingual Turkish-German and a monolingual Turkish corpus of spoken child language. The methodology proceeds in several steps: (1) description of transcribed data (PartiturEditor) and of the concepts of ‘constellation’ and ‘Evocative Field Experiment’ (EFE), (2) the methodological role of the linguistic unit ‘utterance’, its marking as ‘segment’ in transcriptions and its importance for corpus formation (CoMa), (3) search procedures and frequency assignment of the findings (EXAKT), (4) classification according to constellative features of the data, (5) contextual interpretation of the items, (6) consultation of the transcript where needed, (7) contextually based categorisation of the items resulting in an empirical determination of their varieties. The objective of the methodological stages is an empirical foundation of discourse-based linguistic analysis of multilingual corpora, which we call ‘Pragmatic Corpus Analysis’ (PCA).
Research Interests:
This article investigates receptive bilingualism in elicited narrative conversations with Turkish– German children who have grown up in a setting of tension between productive and receptive competences: an immigrant situation with... more
This article investigates receptive bilingualism in elicited narrative conversations with Turkish–
German children who have grown up in a setting of tension between productive and receptive
competences: an immigrant situation with subtractive bilingualism. The acquisitional situation
of the children tends to be bilingual in the preschool years, sometimes with a preference for
Turkish, shifting towards German at the expense of Turkish as the children enter school. The
further development of Turkish depends on communicative practices within the family and
the attention given to immigrant languages within the school system. From a starting point of
discourse passages in which adults speak entirely in Turkish while children respond in German,
the article then focuses more closely on the longitudinal development of one child from the age
of 7 to 11. The study documents empirical evidence of productive, non-productive and receptive
competence in Turkish at different ages, and in particular the understanding and productive use of
one complex subordinating construction. Keeping in mind the lexical and grammatical differences
between German and Turkish, which preclude receptive multilingualism on the basis of similarity,
the article suggests an expansion of the concept of ‘receptive multilingualism’ to include cases of
acquired receptive knowledge.
German children who have grown up in a setting of tension between productive and receptive
competences: an immigrant situation with subtractive bilingualism. The acquisitional situation
of the children tends to be bilingual in the preschool years, sometimes with a preference for
Turkish, shifting towards German at the expense of Turkish as the children enter school. The
further development of Turkish depends on communicative practices within the family and
the attention given to immigrant languages within the school system. From a starting point of
discourse passages in which adults speak entirely in Turkish while children respond in German,
the article then focuses more closely on the longitudinal development of one child from the age
of 7 to 11. The study documents empirical evidence of productive, non-productive and receptive
competence in Turkish at different ages, and in particular the understanding and productive use of
one complex subordinating construction. Keeping in mind the lexical and grammatical differences
between German and Turkish, which preclude receptive multilingualism on the basis of similarity,
the article suggests an expansion of the concept of ‘receptive multilingualism’ to include cases of
acquired receptive knowledge.
Research Interests:
In this paper we report on instances of innovative languaging in the spoken Turkish of bilingual children in Germany. Changes of Turkish mainly occur in areas of connectivity such as deictic/phoric expressions, wh-constructions,... more
In this paper we report on instances of innovative languaging in the spoken Turkish of bilingual
children in Germany. Changes of Turkish mainly occur in areas of connectivity such as deictic/phoric
expressions, wh-constructions, coordination, aspect, evidentiality, particles, and others. Contact-induced
language change
– is described in terms of functional reinterpretations of Standard Turkish linguistic forms, based on
spoken German,
– is seen as being motivated by ‘catalysis’ in multilingual communication and
– is explained by means of the theory of ‘transpositions’ of linguistic procedures, as defined within the
framework of functional-pragmatics.1
The article argues that the changes observed are so systematic in nature that it seems justified to
speak of a new contact variety of Turkish.
children in Germany. Changes of Turkish mainly occur in areas of connectivity such as deictic/phoric
expressions, wh-constructions, coordination, aspect, evidentiality, particles, and others. Contact-induced
language change
– is described in terms of functional reinterpretations of Standard Turkish linguistic forms, based on
spoken German,
– is seen as being motivated by ‘catalysis’ in multilingual communication and
– is explained by means of the theory of ‘transpositions’ of linguistic procedures, as defined within the
framework of functional-pragmatics.1
The article argues that the changes observed are so systematic in nature that it seems justified to
speak of a new contact variety of Turkish.
Research Interests:
The paper examines systematic uses of the linguistic expression işte in elicited narrative conversations of Turkish monolingual and Turkish-German bilingual children as well as of a few exemplary adult speakers. The theoretical framework... more
The paper examines systematic uses of the linguistic expression işte in elicited narrative conversations of Turkish monolingual and Turkish-German bilingual children as well as of a few exemplary adult speakers. The theoretical framework is functional-pragmatic. The main hypothesis is that işte, originally functioning as a discourse particle on a biprocedural basis, with both deictic and incitive procedures, is on its way to develop into a coordinating expression, working both above and below utterance level. In this last use, its functional potential integrates an additional, operative, procedure. The method combines qualitative analyses of empirical occurrences with a quantitative comparison of usage types in the different groups of speakers. As a preliminary result, it can be said that the connective, arguably coordinative, use of işte is a function of narrative and homileïc discourse competence, prevalent in older children and adult speakers and generally in monolingual children, whereas it occurs to a lesser extent in the data of the younger and the bilingual children. While the primary functions of işte are made use of by all informants and seem to be part of early acquisition, the realization of its fully expanded functional potential, including the coordinative usages, seems to be part of later acquisition and can be subject to loss or delay under the influence of language contact.
This study approaches the interface phenomenon of impersonality in three types of Kurmanji data: (1) a growing corpus of conversations recorded in a multilingual diasporic context, (2) a small corpus of thematically related literary... more
This study approaches the interface phenomenon of impersonality in three types of Kurmanji data: (1) a growing corpus of conversations recorded in a multilingual diasporic context, (2) a small corpus of thematically related literary prose, (3) a small corpus of thematically related academic publications. The conversations thematically range between language-biographical narratives and sociolinguistic expert interviews. The literary texts cover issues of a multilingual historical heritage; the academic texts discuss historical and sociolinguistic topics.
The theoretical framework comprises discussions of functional concepts such as subject- and agenthood (Siewierska 2008a, b), actant representation (Johanson 1990), agent demotion (Blevins 2003), and specificity (Johanson 2006), cross-linguistic models of impersonality (Malchukov & Siewierska 2011, Malchukov & Ogawa 2011), inventories of constructions in Iranian (Jahani & Viberg 2010, Jahani, Axenov, Delforooz & Nourzaei 2010, Jahani, Delforooz & Nourzaei 2012), as well as discourse- and text-based approaches (Akar 2011, Berman 2011, Hohenstein 2012, Kameyama 2012).
Communicatively, impersonal constructions can fulfill functions of emotional mitigation, as in autobiographic narratives, or objectivisation and abstraction, as in academic registers. The present paper investigates the continuum between the two. While bordering on phenomena of ‘generalisation’ or ‘vagueness’, which also feature nonspecific agents, ‘impersonalisation’ is characterised by the specificity of the surrounding situation. At the morphosyntactic level, construction types are often shared, resulting in interesting overlap in the data. This is the point at which the discourse-empirical perspective becomes crucial: which forms are used in connection with which specific communicative purpose, text/discourse constellation and register?
Methodologically, the study proceeds along two routes, linking two theoretical approaches: (1) it draws on the typological and Iranianist literature on impersonality in identifying morphosyntactic constructions for a closer contextual look. (2) It uses discourse-analytical criteria to identify larger passages of text or conversation for a closer morphosyntactic investigation.
A preliminary inventory of forms can be given as follows: (1) lexical nouns, auch as mirov or însan ‘man, human’ (example 1), (2) impersonal passives, (3) second-person impersonals (example 2), (4) third-person-plural impersonals, (5) abstract nominals in subject position.
(1) Mirov dikare îdîa bike ku bêhtirî
man ASP-be.able.PRS-3SG claim SBJ-make.PRS-3SG COMP more-EZF
milyonek Kurdî li welatên Yekîtiya Ewrûpayê
million-one Kurd PRP country-EZF.PL Union-EZF.F Europe-OBL.F
dimînin.
ASP-stay.PRS-PL
‘One can claim that more than a million Kurds live in the countries of the European Union’ (Weqfa Navnetewî ya Jinên Azad 2007: 66)
(2) Tu bi Kurdî biaxivî, şerm e, ayib e.
2sg.RCT PRP Kurdish SBJ-speak.PRS-2SG shame is disgrace is
Tu bi Tirkî biaxivî, tu baş bibûyî.
2sg.RCT PRP Turkish SBJ-speak.PRS-2SG 2sg.RCT good SBJ-be.PST-2SG
‘If you speak Kurdish, it’s a shame, it’s a disgrace. If you speak Turkish, you might be fine’ (MEMO_001_Ser).
The theoretical framework comprises discussions of functional concepts such as subject- and agenthood (Siewierska 2008a, b), actant representation (Johanson 1990), agent demotion (Blevins 2003), and specificity (Johanson 2006), cross-linguistic models of impersonality (Malchukov & Siewierska 2011, Malchukov & Ogawa 2011), inventories of constructions in Iranian (Jahani & Viberg 2010, Jahani, Axenov, Delforooz & Nourzaei 2010, Jahani, Delforooz & Nourzaei 2012), as well as discourse- and text-based approaches (Akar 2011, Berman 2011, Hohenstein 2012, Kameyama 2012).
Communicatively, impersonal constructions can fulfill functions of emotional mitigation, as in autobiographic narratives, or objectivisation and abstraction, as in academic registers. The present paper investigates the continuum between the two. While bordering on phenomena of ‘generalisation’ or ‘vagueness’, which also feature nonspecific agents, ‘impersonalisation’ is characterised by the specificity of the surrounding situation. At the morphosyntactic level, construction types are often shared, resulting in interesting overlap in the data. This is the point at which the discourse-empirical perspective becomes crucial: which forms are used in connection with which specific communicative purpose, text/discourse constellation and register?
Methodologically, the study proceeds along two routes, linking two theoretical approaches: (1) it draws on the typological and Iranianist literature on impersonality in identifying morphosyntactic constructions for a closer contextual look. (2) It uses discourse-analytical criteria to identify larger passages of text or conversation for a closer morphosyntactic investigation.
A preliminary inventory of forms can be given as follows: (1) lexical nouns, auch as mirov or însan ‘man, human’ (example 1), (2) impersonal passives, (3) second-person impersonals (example 2), (4) third-person-plural impersonals, (5) abstract nominals in subject position.
(1) Mirov dikare îdîa bike ku bêhtirî
man ASP-be.able.PRS-3SG claim SBJ-make.PRS-3SG COMP more-EZF
milyonek Kurdî li welatên Yekîtiya Ewrûpayê
million-one Kurd PRP country-EZF.PL Union-EZF.F Europe-OBL.F
dimînin.
ASP-stay.PRS-PL
‘One can claim that more than a million Kurds live in the countries of the European Union’ (Weqfa Navnetewî ya Jinên Azad 2007: 66)
(2) Tu bi Kurdî biaxivî, şerm e, ayib e.
2sg.RCT PRP Kurdish SBJ-speak.PRS-2SG shame is disgrace is
Tu bi Tirkî biaxivî, tu baş bibûyî.
2sg.RCT PRP Turkish SBJ-speak.PRS-2SG 2sg.RCT good SBJ-be.PST-2SG
‘If you speak Kurdish, it’s a shame, it’s a disgrace. If you speak Turkish, you might be fine’ (MEMO_001_Ser).
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Multilingualism, Sociolinguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Minority Languages, and 15 moreCorpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, Indo-Iranian Linguistics, Minorities in Turkey, Passive Voice, Impersonal Constructions, Corpus Linguistics, Nominalisations, Iranian Linguistics, Impersonal Construction, Impersonal Constructions, Kurmanji Kurdish, Linguistic Biographies, Cultural Research on Multilingualism, Minoritised Languages, Kurdish linguistics, Kurdish in Germany, and Second Person Singular
This paper studies two types of language-biographical experience related to multilingualism in health care settings: having been a child interpreter and having been a parent of a child interpreter. It looks at language-biographical data... more
This paper studies two types of language-biographical experience related to multilingualism in health care settings: having been a child interpreter and having been a parent of a child interpreter. It looks at language-biographical data (some 17 hours of transcribed oral narra-tives in Turkish and/or German) collected from several generations of Turkish-German multi-linguals, using them as a window to the ‘background of patients’, taking a temporally dis-tanced view.
Research on immigrant ‘child interpreters’ as well as ‘child language brokers’ (Tse 1996) spans fields such as education, social studies (Katz 2014 for a recent overview) and linguis-tics (Meyer 2004). Controversies include ethical issues against the exploitation of underage bilinguals (Orellana 2009), the quality of the translations (Meyer, Pawlack & Kliche 2010), boosting effects in cognitive, social and linguistic abilities (Valdés 2003, Orellana 2009), as well as intergenerational and community-level cooperation (Valdés, Chávez & Angelelli 2003; Orellana 2009; Bauer 2010).
Particularly in the earlier decades of immigration from Turkey to Germany, medical and translational service offered in Turkish, let alone in other languages of Turkey, was scarce. The needs of the first generation – and of monolingually functioning German institutions – were often addressed by children and adolescents, who, as the earliest competent bilinguals, assumed the role of interpreters. For the Turkish-speaking community in Germany, this situa-tion is gradually becoming a thing of the past; it continues, however, to be a remembered historical reality.
Rather than examining in situ phenomena (García-Sánchez 2010; Meyer, Pawlack & Kliche 2010), the present paper looks at these narrated subjective memories, taking a language-biographical interest in long-term developments and retrospect reflections (Bauer 2010). What do informants say about their past experience, its language-biographical impact (Fran-ceschini & Miecznikowski 2004), and the continuing situation vis-à-vis medical institutions? What aspects of their reflective insight might be useful for innovations in multilingual policies currently at issue?
The data shows that the memory of medical constellations involving child interpreters is a difficult one that, even decades later, does not easily come up in conversation: the topic may hide behind other topics, narrators may impersonalise their experience, listeners may be unable to listen etc. At the same time, speakers of this group of immigrants have an im-portant message for listeners from the ‘other’ side. With this situation in mind, discourse-analytical questions relate to formal ways in which memories are brought up and verbalised. This includes a closer look at thematic organisation, speaker-hearer interaction, the expres-sion versus non-expression of personality, and linguistic means of emotional evaluation (Akar 2011, Herkenrath 2016a, b).
Since the topic of child interpreters was not part of the elicitative design, it emerges along-side and through other language-biographical topics, revealing thematic connections to top-ics such as school performance, (lack of) governmentally provided multilingual infrastructure, institutional support for community languages, and intergenerational relations. The study qualitatively focuses on four narrative case studies: two each from the younger (now middle-aged) and older (now retired) generation.
Research on immigrant ‘child interpreters’ as well as ‘child language brokers’ (Tse 1996) spans fields such as education, social studies (Katz 2014 for a recent overview) and linguis-tics (Meyer 2004). Controversies include ethical issues against the exploitation of underage bilinguals (Orellana 2009), the quality of the translations (Meyer, Pawlack & Kliche 2010), boosting effects in cognitive, social and linguistic abilities (Valdés 2003, Orellana 2009), as well as intergenerational and community-level cooperation (Valdés, Chávez & Angelelli 2003; Orellana 2009; Bauer 2010).
Particularly in the earlier decades of immigration from Turkey to Germany, medical and translational service offered in Turkish, let alone in other languages of Turkey, was scarce. The needs of the first generation – and of monolingually functioning German institutions – were often addressed by children and adolescents, who, as the earliest competent bilinguals, assumed the role of interpreters. For the Turkish-speaking community in Germany, this situa-tion is gradually becoming a thing of the past; it continues, however, to be a remembered historical reality.
Rather than examining in situ phenomena (García-Sánchez 2010; Meyer, Pawlack & Kliche 2010), the present paper looks at these narrated subjective memories, taking a language-biographical interest in long-term developments and retrospect reflections (Bauer 2010). What do informants say about their past experience, its language-biographical impact (Fran-ceschini & Miecznikowski 2004), and the continuing situation vis-à-vis medical institutions? What aspects of their reflective insight might be useful for innovations in multilingual policies currently at issue?
The data shows that the memory of medical constellations involving child interpreters is a difficult one that, even decades later, does not easily come up in conversation: the topic may hide behind other topics, narrators may impersonalise their experience, listeners may be unable to listen etc. At the same time, speakers of this group of immigrants have an im-portant message for listeners from the ‘other’ side. With this situation in mind, discourse-analytical questions relate to formal ways in which memories are brought up and verbalised. This includes a closer look at thematic organisation, speaker-hearer interaction, the expres-sion versus non-expression of personality, and linguistic means of emotional evaluation (Akar 2011, Herkenrath 2016a, b).
Since the topic of child interpreters was not part of the elicitative design, it emerges along-side and through other language-biographical topics, revealing thematic connections to top-ics such as school performance, (lack of) governmentally provided multilingual infrastructure, institutional support for community languages, and intergenerational relations. The study qualitatively focuses on four narrative case studies: two each from the younger (now middle-aged) and older (now retired) generation.
Research Interests:
This paper qualitatively explores phenomena of information structure in a growing trilingual corpus of autobiographical and language-biographical narratives, recorded in Germany, where the centuries-long multilingual tradition from... more
This paper qualitatively explores phenomena of information structure in a growing trilingual corpus of autobiographical and language-biographical narratives, recorded in Germany, where the centuries-long multilingual tradition from Western Asia has had to face a comparatively monolingualist local tradition, but has nonetheless become further enriched. The data are ‘long conversations’, averaging an hour, and include interaction not only between informants and an interviewer, but also between main informants and other participants. As a function of a deliberately low-structuring field approach, topics are observably approached in an oblique way. The corpus is currently under construction; out of sixty hours of recordings, some eleven hours have so far been transcribed.
The present study is interested in the syntactic realisation of topic introductions and elaborations in the three languages considered, identified in a macro-level discourse-analytical approach. Rather than looking at language change, the study attempts to sketch core elements of a trilingual ‘repertoire’ (Matras 2009) by way of exploring discourse-functional areas in which surface expressions in the three languages can be contrasted. The corpus-driven approach starts from a thematically structured concordance, focusing on beginnings of language-biographical topics. It specifically considers points at which the management of hearer (non-)knowledge and (non-)understanding (Ehlich & Rehbein 1979, Kameyama 2004) becomes crucial, e.g. in the weighting versus backgrounding of information, in interactional passages in the vicinity of wh-constructions, or in the linguistic processing of elaborations.
Syntactic operationalisations are, in a corpus-driven broad approach, attention-focusing functions of (1) word order, (2) wh, and (3) actant expression. (1) The information-structuring functionalisation of word order (Erdal 1999, Hoffmann 1995, 1997, Haig 2015) subtly differs between the three languages in different layers of the VP, IP, and CP areas. (2) Wh is looked at in both main and dependent clauses, the latter an area in which the independency versus merging of a hearer-directed interrogative with a clause-linking element is a comparative issue (Herkenrath 2011, 2013). Actant expression varies with respect to free versus bound expression as well as in terms of aligment (Johanson 1990, Haig 2008).
The passages under analysis are in Kurmanji, Turkish, and German; this includes transitions and mixed passages. The grammatical areas will be covered to the extent that they play a functional role in the passages identified by means of the mentioned discourse-analytical criteria.
The present study is interested in the syntactic realisation of topic introductions and elaborations in the three languages considered, identified in a macro-level discourse-analytical approach. Rather than looking at language change, the study attempts to sketch core elements of a trilingual ‘repertoire’ (Matras 2009) by way of exploring discourse-functional areas in which surface expressions in the three languages can be contrasted. The corpus-driven approach starts from a thematically structured concordance, focusing on beginnings of language-biographical topics. It specifically considers points at which the management of hearer (non-)knowledge and (non-)understanding (Ehlich & Rehbein 1979, Kameyama 2004) becomes crucial, e.g. in the weighting versus backgrounding of information, in interactional passages in the vicinity of wh-constructions, or in the linguistic processing of elaborations.
Syntactic operationalisations are, in a corpus-driven broad approach, attention-focusing functions of (1) word order, (2) wh, and (3) actant expression. (1) The information-structuring functionalisation of word order (Erdal 1999, Hoffmann 1995, 1997, Haig 2015) subtly differs between the three languages in different layers of the VP, IP, and CP areas. (2) Wh is looked at in both main and dependent clauses, the latter an area in which the independency versus merging of a hearer-directed interrogative with a clause-linking element is a comparative issue (Herkenrath 2011, 2013). Actant expression varies with respect to free versus bound expression as well as in terms of aligment (Johanson 1990, Haig 2008).
The passages under analysis are in Kurmanji, Turkish, and German; this includes transitions and mixed passages. The grammatical areas will be covered to the extent that they play a functional role in the passages identified by means of the mentioned discourse-analytical criteria.
Research Interests:
Dieser Beitrag richtet – formal und inhaltlich – einen sprachbiografischen Blick auf die Alternativen zu den im Call benannten monolingualistischen Sichtweisen. Ein Anliegen dabei ist zu zeigen, wie mehrsprachige Repertoires und... more
Dieser Beitrag richtet – formal und inhaltlich – einen sprachbiografischen Blick auf die Alternativen zu den im Call benannten monolingualistischen Sichtweisen. Ein Anliegen dabei ist zu zeigen, wie mehrsprachige Repertoires und mehrsprachige Praktiken – als Teil der einwanderungsgesellschaftlichen genauso wie der globalen Realität – einen kulturellen, d.h. sowohl intellektuellen als auch ästhetischen, Reichtum bedeuten. Diese Erfahrung ergibt sich aus dem produktiven und rezeptiven Umgang mit sprachtypologisch diversen Mustern und Konstruktionen – türkisch-deutsche Mehrsprachigkeit ist reich an solchen Erfahrungsmöglichkeiten.
Linguistisch wäre es nicht erstrebenswert, hier sprachplanerisch im Sinne einer Reduktion auf die deutsche Amtssprache hinwirken zu wollen; der Preis wären Einbußen an Sprachvitalität: Durch ein machtpolitisches oder verwaltungshandelnes Zurückdrängen aus öffentlichen Räumen verlieren minorisierte Sprachen Gebrauchsdomänen, mit zu erwartenden negativen Auswirkungen (Calvet 1974, Fishman 1991, Öpengin 2011), nicht zuletzt für Kinder in ihrer mehrsprachigen Entwicklung (Karakoç 2007, Herkenrath 2014). Ein Teil des “Integrations”diskurses spielt in der Tat die Herkunftssprachen gegen die deutsche Amtssprache aus und wertet sie ab. Gleichzeitig versuchen entgegengesetzte Diskurse Einwanderersprachen zu unterstützen, indem sie ihnen institutionelle, etwa schulische, Räume eröffnen (Krumm & Reich 2013, Küppers, Schroeder & Gülbeyaz 2014). Die Biografien Mehrsprachiger weisen Spuren beider Diskurse auf; diese genauer zu betrachten, ist das zweite Anliegen.
Diese Studie verfolgt somit inhaltliche und formale Ziele: Sie untersucht mündliche Erzählungen erwachsener SprecherInnen in einem in Deutschland aufgenommen türkischsprachigen Korpus und präsentiert dabei ein Inventar sprachbiografischer Themen. Konkret wird untersucht, wie individuelle mehrsprachige Repertoires von sprachbiografischen Gegebenheiten geprägt sind: SprecherInnen erinnern und reflektieren gesellschaftlich kontextualisierte Erwerbs- und Lernsituationen, ihre Teilnahme an mehrsprachigen Diskursen, sowie verschiedene Aspekte intergenerationeller Weitergabe und herkunftssprachlich gebundener historischer Erinnerung. Die Untersuchung richtet ihr Hauptaugenmerk auf die Sicht der ältereren eingewanderten Generation auf die Mehrsprachigkeitsentwicklung ihrer in Deutschland auf-wachsenden Kinder und Enkel.
Die Daten werden in der Originalsprache mit den entsprechenden Annotationen präsentiert, erlauben also auch einen Blick auf die typologischen Besonderheiten einer agglutinierenden kopffinalen Sprache.
Linguistisch wäre es nicht erstrebenswert, hier sprachplanerisch im Sinne einer Reduktion auf die deutsche Amtssprache hinwirken zu wollen; der Preis wären Einbußen an Sprachvitalität: Durch ein machtpolitisches oder verwaltungshandelnes Zurückdrängen aus öffentlichen Räumen verlieren minorisierte Sprachen Gebrauchsdomänen, mit zu erwartenden negativen Auswirkungen (Calvet 1974, Fishman 1991, Öpengin 2011), nicht zuletzt für Kinder in ihrer mehrsprachigen Entwicklung (Karakoç 2007, Herkenrath 2014). Ein Teil des “Integrations”diskurses spielt in der Tat die Herkunftssprachen gegen die deutsche Amtssprache aus und wertet sie ab. Gleichzeitig versuchen entgegengesetzte Diskurse Einwanderersprachen zu unterstützen, indem sie ihnen institutionelle, etwa schulische, Räume eröffnen (Krumm & Reich 2013, Küppers, Schroeder & Gülbeyaz 2014). Die Biografien Mehrsprachiger weisen Spuren beider Diskurse auf; diese genauer zu betrachten, ist das zweite Anliegen.
Diese Studie verfolgt somit inhaltliche und formale Ziele: Sie untersucht mündliche Erzählungen erwachsener SprecherInnen in einem in Deutschland aufgenommen türkischsprachigen Korpus und präsentiert dabei ein Inventar sprachbiografischer Themen. Konkret wird untersucht, wie individuelle mehrsprachige Repertoires von sprachbiografischen Gegebenheiten geprägt sind: SprecherInnen erinnern und reflektieren gesellschaftlich kontextualisierte Erwerbs- und Lernsituationen, ihre Teilnahme an mehrsprachigen Diskursen, sowie verschiedene Aspekte intergenerationeller Weitergabe und herkunftssprachlich gebundener historischer Erinnerung. Die Untersuchung richtet ihr Hauptaugenmerk auf die Sicht der ältereren eingewanderten Generation auf die Mehrsprachigkeitsentwicklung ihrer in Deutschland auf-wachsenden Kinder und Enkel.
Die Daten werden in der Originalsprache mit den entsprechenden Annotationen präsentiert, erlauben also auch einen Blick auf die typologischen Besonderheiten einer agglutinierenden kopffinalen Sprache.
Research Interests:
The cognitive-mental category of ‘evidentiality’ expresses that a narrated event is stated indirectly. This category is linguistically realized in Turkish by means of specific grammatical markers: -mIş and -(y)mIş (Johanson 2000a). In... more
The cognitive-mental category of ‘evidentiality’ expresses that a narrated event is stated indirectly. This category is linguistically realized in Turkish by means of specific grammatical markers: -mIş and -(y)mIş (Johanson 2000a). In German, it can be either expressed by analytical modal-lexical elements or left unexpressed (Ehlich & Rehbein 1972).
One crucial point in Turkish is that there exist discourse types that are based on specific verbal items, such as -mIş and -(y)mIş. Given this discourse function of evidential markers, certain narrative discourse types can be recognized by successions of the given forms (Johanson 2000b).
It has already been shown that evidential markers in Turkish occur quantitatively less in the data of Turkish-German bilingual children, as compared with the monolingual Turkish children (Rehbein & Karakoç 2004, Karakoç 2007). Karakoç (2006) deals with the questions of how this mental category is linguistically realized in the Turkish of bilingual children, which linguistic and communicative strategies are used in bilingual context and to what extent the realization patterns differ from the monolingual usage. This analysis has so far been based on a concordance obtained semi-manually from a corpus of spoken child data.
The present paper reconsiders the results obtained by Karakoç (2006) by applying a pragmatically conceived corpus-analytical methodology, using a quantitative overview as a basis for a concordance-based discourse analysis (Schmidt 2010, Herkenrath & Rehbein 2012). This methodology entails an automatic search, using the EXMARaLDA-based tool EXAKT. In particular, a specific search formulation has been developed in order to systematically obtain access to connected passages of discourse that are candidates for -mIş-based discourse types.
One crucial point in Turkish is that there exist discourse types that are based on specific verbal items, such as -mIş and -(y)mIş. Given this discourse function of evidential markers, certain narrative discourse types can be recognized by successions of the given forms (Johanson 2000b).
It has already been shown that evidential markers in Turkish occur quantitatively less in the data of Turkish-German bilingual children, as compared with the monolingual Turkish children (Rehbein & Karakoç 2004, Karakoç 2007). Karakoç (2006) deals with the questions of how this mental category is linguistically realized in the Turkish of bilingual children, which linguistic and communicative strategies are used in bilingual context and to what extent the realization patterns differ from the monolingual usage. This analysis has so far been based on a concordance obtained semi-manually from a corpus of spoken child data.
The present paper reconsiders the results obtained by Karakoç (2006) by applying a pragmatically conceived corpus-analytical methodology, using a quantitative overview as a basis for a concordance-based discourse analysis (Schmidt 2010, Herkenrath & Rehbein 2012). This methodology entails an automatic search, using the EXMARaLDA-based tool EXAKT. In particular, a specific search formulation has been developed in order to systematically obtain access to connected passages of discourse that are candidates for -mIş-based discourse types.
Research Interests:
This paper approaches the subject of multilingual memories from a linguistic perspective, looking at a corpus of oral autobiographic narratives. The data are in Turkish, German and, to some extent, Kurmanji Kurdish. Recordings took place... more
This paper approaches the subject of multilingual memories from a linguistic perspective, looking at a corpus of oral autobiographic narratives. The data are in Turkish, German and, to some extent, Kurmanji Kurdish. Recordings took place in Germany: in a large industrial area and in a small multilingual town, among immigrants from Turkey.
The topic of multilingual or multicultural memories has so far been treated in or with respect to literary texts (e.g. Uzun 2007; Kirchner 2006, Esen 2009, Millas 2009 on memories of a multilingual culture on the retreat). The present idea is to extend this framework in two ways: first, to include Turkish speakers living in Germany, where they find themselves in a (sometimes doubly or multiply) minoritized and at the same time linguistically more complex situation; second, to take a linguistic look at orally transmitted memories. Thematic findings in the corpus comprise memories of a multilingual childhood, school experiences, experiences of exchange with members of other multilingual groups, as well as intergenerational perceptions and interactions.
The methodological claim is that, given the higher speed of speech production as compared with writing, situations of oral communication can offer a fast access to memory. On the other hand, oral narratives are distinctive from texts in being interactive (Ehlich 1984) in a very immediate sense: activation of memories depends on the perception and management of listeners’ (non-)knowledge as a prerequisite for narrative planning and processing (Kameyama 2004, Herkenrath 2011).
Analytically, the thematic organisation of memories in discourse is looked at in terms of very concrete grammatical procedures: in terms of wh, information-structural devices, discourse markers etc. The paper presents two types of results: first, a thematic inventory and, second, a discourse-grammatical analysis of the constellations in which memories narratively emerge.
The topic of multilingual or multicultural memories has so far been treated in or with respect to literary texts (e.g. Uzun 2007; Kirchner 2006, Esen 2009, Millas 2009 on memories of a multilingual culture on the retreat). The present idea is to extend this framework in two ways: first, to include Turkish speakers living in Germany, where they find themselves in a (sometimes doubly or multiply) minoritized and at the same time linguistically more complex situation; second, to take a linguistic look at orally transmitted memories. Thematic findings in the corpus comprise memories of a multilingual childhood, school experiences, experiences of exchange with members of other multilingual groups, as well as intergenerational perceptions and interactions.
The methodological claim is that, given the higher speed of speech production as compared with writing, situations of oral communication can offer a fast access to memory. On the other hand, oral narratives are distinctive from texts in being interactive (Ehlich 1984) in a very immediate sense: activation of memories depends on the perception and management of listeners’ (non-)knowledge as a prerequisite for narrative planning and processing (Kameyama 2004, Herkenrath 2011).
Analytically, the thematic organisation of memories in discourse is looked at in terms of very concrete grammatical procedures: in terms of wh, information-structural devices, discourse markers etc. The paper presents two types of results: first, a thematic inventory and, second, a discourse-grammatical analysis of the constellations in which memories narratively emerge.
Research Interests:
Our paper investigates a special group of complex complementation markers, which, in comparison with canonical markers, are marginally used, in various Turkic languages. These complex markers morphologically contain a participial suffix... more
Our paper investigates a special group of complex complementation markers, which, in comparison with canonical markers, are marginally used, in various Turkic languages. These complex markers morphologically contain a participial suffix to which is attached the suffix -LIK or -DIK (not to be confused with the Turkish nonfinite subordinator -DIK), whose function and etymological source will be the topic of our discussion. Forms found in some modern languages are: -mIşlIK and -mAzlIK in Turkish, -A(:)ndIK and -yĀndIK in Turkmen, -GAnlIK in Noghay and Kazakh, -GAndIK in Kirghiz, -GȧnliK and -(ȧ)yåtgȧnliK in Uzbek, -GAnlik, -Adiɣanlik and -Ivatqanlik in Uyghur etc., see the Turkish example in (1) and the Turkmen example in (2):
(1) Belki de berber-in kend-in-e sığ-mazlığ-ı var-dı orada.
perhaps also barber-GEN self-PSS3-DAT fit.into-MAZLIK-PSS3 exist-PCOP there
‘And perhaps was it the case that the barber was in an internal turmoil there; …’ (lit.: ‘his not fitting into himself existed’) (Toptaş 1995: 11)
(2) Gel-endig-im-i bil-ýär.
come-ANDIK-PSS1SG-ACC know-PRES
‘(S)he knows that I have come.’
There is no sufficient research on the function and paradigmatic status of these markers within complementation systems of individual languages, let alone a systematically comparative study considering the diachronic situation in Turkic. Our assumption is that, even if the respective items suggest morphological and compositional parallelism across languages, their language-specific developments as well as their functional qualities are not the same. Contrasting different paths of nominalization and different uses, we will address the question of whether the second part of these complex forms (-LIK or -DIK) goes back to (a) a derivational suffix or (b) to a copular verb.
We present clues for and against both argumentations, showing how the situation differs in individual languages. An argument in favour of the derivational analysis for some languages is the fact that we find occurrences of one and the same form on a functional continuum ranging from lexicalised nominals to clausal employments with a suspended or deranked illocution. Forms with a copulative etymology (e.g. Johanson 2006 [1998]: 60–61), on the other hand, can be argued to realise an anchoring in the speech situation, allowing a ‘propositional’ analysis (in the sense of Boye 2010, Boye & Lind Sørensen 2015); see (2). Even in Turkish, we marginally find constructions in which -LIK follows a case marker – not a position for a derivational suffix, see (3). The status of such constructions will be discussed.
(3) Tereddüt-te-ydi dokun-duğ-u kişi-nin akl-ı-nın
doubt-LOC-PCOP3 touch-DIK-PSS3 person-GEN mind-PSS3-GEN
yer-in-de-liğ-in-den.
place-PSS3-LOC-LIK-PSS3-ABL
‘She was in doubt as to whether the person she had touched was in his/her right mind’ (lit.: ‘She was in doubt as to the being-in-place of the person she had touched ’s mind’) (Çelik 2011: 49–50)
We will discuss the illocutionary status and ‘truth valuedness’ of predications based on these markers, applying text-analytical methods to a corpus consisting of literary narratives, also drawing, to a certain extent, on historical sources for etymological background.
(1) Belki de berber-in kend-in-e sığ-mazlığ-ı var-dı orada.
perhaps also barber-GEN self-PSS3-DAT fit.into-MAZLIK-PSS3 exist-PCOP there
‘And perhaps was it the case that the barber was in an internal turmoil there; …’ (lit.: ‘his not fitting into himself existed’) (Toptaş 1995: 11)
(2) Gel-endig-im-i bil-ýär.
come-ANDIK-PSS1SG-ACC know-PRES
‘(S)he knows that I have come.’
There is no sufficient research on the function and paradigmatic status of these markers within complementation systems of individual languages, let alone a systematically comparative study considering the diachronic situation in Turkic. Our assumption is that, even if the respective items suggest morphological and compositional parallelism across languages, their language-specific developments as well as their functional qualities are not the same. Contrasting different paths of nominalization and different uses, we will address the question of whether the second part of these complex forms (-LIK or -DIK) goes back to (a) a derivational suffix or (b) to a copular verb.
We present clues for and against both argumentations, showing how the situation differs in individual languages. An argument in favour of the derivational analysis for some languages is the fact that we find occurrences of one and the same form on a functional continuum ranging from lexicalised nominals to clausal employments with a suspended or deranked illocution. Forms with a copulative etymology (e.g. Johanson 2006 [1998]: 60–61), on the other hand, can be argued to realise an anchoring in the speech situation, allowing a ‘propositional’ analysis (in the sense of Boye 2010, Boye & Lind Sørensen 2015); see (2). Even in Turkish, we marginally find constructions in which -LIK follows a case marker – not a position for a derivational suffix, see (3). The status of such constructions will be discussed.
(3) Tereddüt-te-ydi dokun-duğ-u kişi-nin akl-ı-nın
doubt-LOC-PCOP3 touch-DIK-PSS3 person-GEN mind-PSS3-GEN
yer-in-de-liğ-in-den.
place-PSS3-LOC-LIK-PSS3-ABL
‘She was in doubt as to whether the person she had touched was in his/her right mind’ (lit.: ‘She was in doubt as to the being-in-place of the person she had touched ’s mind’) (Çelik 2011: 49–50)
We will discuss the illocutionary status and ‘truth valuedness’ of predications based on these markers, applying text-analytical methods to a corpus consisting of literary narratives, also drawing, to a certain extent, on historical sources for etymological background.
Research Interests:
This paper looks at empirically documented employments of clausal and NP-level junctors in a corpus of academic Kurmanji. The term ‘junctors’ covers subordinating and coordinating elements (bi qendê (ku) ‘to the extent (that)’, lê belê... more
This paper looks at empirically documented employments of clausal and NP-level junctors in a corpus of academic Kurmanji. The term ‘junctors’ covers subordinating and coordinating elements (bi qendê (ku) ‘to the extent (that)’, lê belê ‘but’ etc.) as well as adverbial connectors (e.g. û bi piranî jî ‘and also in the majority of cases’). A number of junctors in Kurmanji are polylexical or multi-word units that flexibly combine nouns, adpositions, case, ezafe (Haig 2011), deixis, as well as, depending on syntactic level, the semantically neutral complementizer ku into complex expressions, see the use of ji ber ‘because of’ versus ji ber ku ‘because’ in examples (1) and (2):
(1) … ji ber hin bandorên derûnî û siyasî …
because of some influence-EZF.PL psychological and political
‘… under some psychological or political influence…’ (22_t_kur: 23)
(2) … ji ber ku ev hevok hin rêbazên tewanga
because DEI sentence some method-EZF.PL inflection-EZF.F
cînav û lêkeran cihbicih nakin.
pronoun and verb-OBL.PL place-to-place NEG-do.PRS.3PL
‘… because these sentences do not conform to some rules of inflection of pronouns and verbs.’ (01_m_kur: 12)
Looking at a collection of academic texts published in Kurmanji Kurdish, this investigation crosslinguistically tests analytical categories developed in research on the semantics and micro-level functionality of junctors in German (Redder 1990, 2007, Fabricius Hansen 2007) and Turkish (Borsley & Kornfilt 2000), two contact languages of Kurmanji (Mithun 1988 for an earlier, more widely typological view of coordination). The research question emerging from this framework with respect to Kurmanji is how morphosyntactic units below and above word level combine to (re-)focus and process built-up text knowledge at a variety of small-unit levels in complex language.
The reason why a corpus of academic language has been chosen is a widespread preference in academic language for nominal style, offering extended usages of clause-level junctors at the NP or DP level, where they link modifiers to their nouns and to each other (recently Hennig 2015a, b). The inner functional compositionality of multi-procedural junctors can best be teased out when looking at their flexible employment at these different syntactic levels. By hypothesis, Kurmanji Kurdish, which offers a wealth of flexible word combinations at this functional level, offers an interesting look into these issues.
The methodology is a concordancing one, categorizing contextually embedded occurrences of multi-word junctors as well as of the individual units they are composed of. By way of results, this approach presents steps towards a context-based analytical deconstruction of multi-word junctors into their functional units.
(1) … ji ber hin bandorên derûnî û siyasî …
because of some influence-EZF.PL psychological and political
‘… under some psychological or political influence…’ (22_t_kur: 23)
(2) … ji ber ku ev hevok hin rêbazên tewanga
because DEI sentence some method-EZF.PL inflection-EZF.F
cînav û lêkeran cihbicih nakin.
pronoun and verb-OBL.PL place-to-place NEG-do.PRS.3PL
‘… because these sentences do not conform to some rules of inflection of pronouns and verbs.’ (01_m_kur: 12)
Looking at a collection of academic texts published in Kurmanji Kurdish, this investigation crosslinguistically tests analytical categories developed in research on the semantics and micro-level functionality of junctors in German (Redder 1990, 2007, Fabricius Hansen 2007) and Turkish (Borsley & Kornfilt 2000), two contact languages of Kurmanji (Mithun 1988 for an earlier, more widely typological view of coordination). The research question emerging from this framework with respect to Kurmanji is how morphosyntactic units below and above word level combine to (re-)focus and process built-up text knowledge at a variety of small-unit levels in complex language.
The reason why a corpus of academic language has been chosen is a widespread preference in academic language for nominal style, offering extended usages of clause-level junctors at the NP or DP level, where they link modifiers to their nouns and to each other (recently Hennig 2015a, b). The inner functional compositionality of multi-procedural junctors can best be teased out when looking at their flexible employment at these different syntactic levels. By hypothesis, Kurmanji Kurdish, which offers a wealth of flexible word combinations at this functional level, offers an interesting look into these issues.
The methodology is a concordancing one, categorizing contextually embedded occurrences of multi-word junctors as well as of the individual units they are composed of. By way of results, this approach presents steps towards a context-based analytical deconstruction of multi-word junctors into their functional units.
Research Interests:
This paper comparatively looks at phenomena of NP- and clause-level junction in a corpus of academic publications written in Kurmanji Kurdish. It thereby hopes to address issues of academic internationalisation: Kurmanji, while not a... more
This paper comparatively looks at phenomena of NP- and clause-level junction in a corpus of academic publications written in Kurmanji Kurdish. It thereby hopes to address issues of academic internationalisation: Kurmanji, while not a national language, has lately been dynamically emerging as an academic language. It plays a central role as an immigrant language in Europe; the contexts of its use are always multilingual. The present study investigates some specific phenomena of connectivity in written texts.
The term ‘junctor’ covers subordinating and coordinating elements (e.g. bi qendê (ku) ‘to the extent (that)’, lê belê ‘but’ etc.) as well as adverbial connectors (û bi piranî jî ‘and also in the majority of cases’). Junction techniques in Kurmanji flexibly combine nouns, adpositions, case, ezafe (Haig 2011), deixis, as well as, depending on syntactic level (Mithun 1988), the semantically neutral complementizer ku into ‘polylexical’, often multi-word, expressions (cf. Fabricius-Hansen 2007, Hennig 2015). Drawing on a functional-pragmatic research paradigm, the present approach attempts a cross-linguistic application of the analytical method of ‘procedural analysis’ (Ehlich 1982, 1986, Grießhaber 1999, Redder 1990, 2005, 2007, Rehbein 1995, 1999, 2007), in exemplarily teasing out the knowledge-processing functionality of word- and below-word-level units in some empirically documented employments.
The term ‘junctor’ covers subordinating and coordinating elements (e.g. bi qendê (ku) ‘to the extent (that)’, lê belê ‘but’ etc.) as well as adverbial connectors (û bi piranî jî ‘and also in the majority of cases’). Junction techniques in Kurmanji flexibly combine nouns, adpositions, case, ezafe (Haig 2011), deixis, as well as, depending on syntactic level (Mithun 1988), the semantically neutral complementizer ku into ‘polylexical’, often multi-word, expressions (cf. Fabricius-Hansen 2007, Hennig 2015). Drawing on a functional-pragmatic research paradigm, the present approach attempts a cross-linguistic application of the analytical method of ‘procedural analysis’ (Ehlich 1982, 1986, Grießhaber 1999, Redder 1990, 2005, 2007, Rehbein 1995, 1999, 2007), in exemplarily teasing out the knowledge-processing functionality of word- and below-word-level units in some empirically documented employments.
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Diese Untersuchung kontextualisiert sich in der Forschung zur multikulturellen bzw. multilingualen türkischen Erinnerung (Kirchner 2006, 2009, Esen 2009, Millas 2009 etc. in Bezug auf literarische Erinnerungen), indem sie den Blick... more
Diese Untersuchung kontextualisiert sich in der Forschung zur multikulturellen bzw. multilingualen türkischen Erinnerung (Kirchner 2006, 2009, Esen 2009, Millas 2009 etc. in Bezug auf literarische Erinnerungen), indem sie den Blick erweitert und auf erzählte Erinnerungen türkischer SprecherInnen an vergangene Jahrzehnte in Deutschland richtet. Gleichzeitig wird eine methodische Erweiterung vorgenommen, indem es sich bei den Erinnerungserzählungen um mündliche handelt: Es wird ein Korpus von Erzählungen zur deutschen Bürokratie und daraus thematisch weitläufig abgeleiteten autobiografischen Erinnerungen zugrunde gelegt, das in einem Industriegebiet in Deutschland von ehemaligen “GastarbeiterInnen” aus der Türkei sowie Angehörigen der ihnen nachfolgenden Generationen erhoben wurde.
Wie die Daten zeigen, verfügen die Erzählenden über eine historische Lebenserfahrung als multilingual Sozialisierte in einer Situation, in der die Sprache ihrer Familienerinnerungen mehr oder weniger in private Bereiche zurückgedrängt ist. Gleichzeitig ist Deutsch auch für späte L2-SprecherInnen die Sprache, in der öffentliche Erinnerungen gespeichert sind. Beides interagiert; gleichwohl stellt sich die Frage nach einer ‘Übersetzbarkeit’ zwischen privater und öffentlicher Erinnerung (Radstone 2007: 85). Thematisch geht es um Begegnungen mit deutschen Institutionen, Arbeitsplatzerlebnisse, Kommunikationserfahrungen sowie das Aufwachsen der Kinder.
In linguistischer Sicht richtet die Untersuchung ihr Augenmerk auf die diskursive Ein- und Fortführung thematischer Episoden in der mündlichen Interaktion, spezifisch operationalisiert im Sinne eines wh-gesteuerten (Nicht-)Wissens- und (Nicht-)Verstehensmagagements (Ehlich & Rehbein 1979, Kameyama 2004, Herkenrath 2011). Nichtwissen beim Hörer ist, per Grundannahme, einerseits eine Grundvoraussetzung für ein Verbalisierenkönnen; andererseits muss es sich dabei um ein spezifisches, im Kontext von anderem, Gewusstem, stehendes handeln. Das Verbalisierte wiederum befördert weitere Erinnerung. Der Verstehensprozess dagegen interagiert in noch anderer Weise dynamisch mit dem Erzählenkönnen, etwa, indem gegenüber einem Nichtverstehen signalisierenden Hörer ein Erzählplan verlangsamt und, damit zusammenhängend, detailliert werden muss. Die Untersuchung präsentiert zunächst in Art eines empirischen Inventars eine Auswahl von kommunikativen Konstellationen und schlägt in einem weiteren Schritt Kategorien für deren Typisierung vor.
Wie die Daten zeigen, verfügen die Erzählenden über eine historische Lebenserfahrung als multilingual Sozialisierte in einer Situation, in der die Sprache ihrer Familienerinnerungen mehr oder weniger in private Bereiche zurückgedrängt ist. Gleichzeitig ist Deutsch auch für späte L2-SprecherInnen die Sprache, in der öffentliche Erinnerungen gespeichert sind. Beides interagiert; gleichwohl stellt sich die Frage nach einer ‘Übersetzbarkeit’ zwischen privater und öffentlicher Erinnerung (Radstone 2007: 85). Thematisch geht es um Begegnungen mit deutschen Institutionen, Arbeitsplatzerlebnisse, Kommunikationserfahrungen sowie das Aufwachsen der Kinder.
In linguistischer Sicht richtet die Untersuchung ihr Augenmerk auf die diskursive Ein- und Fortführung thematischer Episoden in der mündlichen Interaktion, spezifisch operationalisiert im Sinne eines wh-gesteuerten (Nicht-)Wissens- und (Nicht-)Verstehensmagagements (Ehlich & Rehbein 1979, Kameyama 2004, Herkenrath 2011). Nichtwissen beim Hörer ist, per Grundannahme, einerseits eine Grundvoraussetzung für ein Verbalisierenkönnen; andererseits muss es sich dabei um ein spezifisches, im Kontext von anderem, Gewusstem, stehendes handeln. Das Verbalisierte wiederum befördert weitere Erinnerung. Der Verstehensprozess dagegen interagiert in noch anderer Weise dynamisch mit dem Erzählenkönnen, etwa, indem gegenüber einem Nichtverstehen signalisierenden Hörer ein Erzählplan verlangsamt und, damit zusammenhängend, detailliert werden muss. Die Untersuchung präsentiert zunächst in Art eines empirischen Inventars eine Auswahl von kommunikativen Konstellationen und schlägt in einem weiteren Schritt Kategorien für deren Typisierung vor.
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This paper studies some communicative and structural phenomena of codeswitching, looking at Turkish-German late bilingualism and Kurmanji-Turkish-German trilingualism in three spoken-language corpora. Codeswitching in these data occurs in... more
This paper studies some communicative and structural phenomena of codeswitching, looking at Turkish-German late bilingualism and Kurmanji-Turkish-German trilingualism in three spoken-language corpora. Codeswitching in these data occurs in connection with metalinguistic reflections, securing of understanding, as well as teaching sequences of different types.
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This paper attempts a qualitative stock-taking of verb constructions in Kurmanji, Turkish and German. It takes as a starting point the surface-structural phenomenon of verb clustering, exploring the functional basis of clustering effects... more
This paper attempts a qualitative stock-taking of verb constructions in Kurmanji, Turkish and German. It takes as a starting point the surface-structural phenomenon of verb clustering, exploring the functional basis of clustering effects in and across these three languages, which form part of individual and societal multilingual constellations in Germany.
The data are taken from a corpus of narrative conversations recorded with speakers representative of various types of multilingualism. Individual speakers’ linguistic repertoire includes a range of constructions spanning two or three typologically different verb systems. Constructional patterns may appear cross-linguistically where systems interact, notably in the data of late bilinguals.
I consider a ‘verb cluster’ any surface sequence featuring two or more adjacent verbs, irrespective of clause boundaries or other hierarchical issues (Kiss & van Rijmsdijk 2004), also keeping in mind the necessity to discuss what is to be meant by ‘intervening material’ in a colloquial-spoken-language empirical take on the subject. On this basis, I look at the realization of a number of functional categories of the VP, IP and CP systems, such as diathesis, modality, tense/aspect and illocution/subordination, in spontaneous speech.
The approach combines a macroparametric with a microparametric approach (Baker 2008). The macroparametric difference is one between syntactic verb clustering versus a lack thereof (or restriction to below-word-level clustering, Kiss & van Rijmsdijk 2004): Kurmanji and German tend to distribute the functional categories of the verb system among several verbal elements (i.e. a combination of lexical verbs and auxiliaries), while Turkish works agglutinatively in expressing roughly the same categories in one single verb. It is the former situation that potentially results in clustering effects; however, the agglutinative character of the Turkish verb system can result in clustering effects of a different order, with complex verb forms morphologically binding so much material that they end up adjacent to each other.
At the micro-parametric level, the paper looks at differences between languages that do use auxiliaries (e.g. van Craenenbroeck 2014), namely Kurmanji and German (Turkish to a much lesser extent), and at this level, the semantics of the auxiliaries comes into focus (e.g. Redder 1992, Kayne 2000: 107ff). In this connection, the paper compares, first, the derivation of auxiliaries from lexical material, and, second, types of semi-finite lexical forms (infinitives, participles, subjunctives) the auxiliaries combine with.
The data are taken from a corpus of narrative conversations recorded with speakers representative of various types of multilingualism. Individual speakers’ linguistic repertoire includes a range of constructions spanning two or three typologically different verb systems. Constructional patterns may appear cross-linguistically where systems interact, notably in the data of late bilinguals.
I consider a ‘verb cluster’ any surface sequence featuring two or more adjacent verbs, irrespective of clause boundaries or other hierarchical issues (Kiss & van Rijmsdijk 2004), also keeping in mind the necessity to discuss what is to be meant by ‘intervening material’ in a colloquial-spoken-language empirical take on the subject. On this basis, I look at the realization of a number of functional categories of the VP, IP and CP systems, such as diathesis, modality, tense/aspect and illocution/subordination, in spontaneous speech.
The approach combines a macroparametric with a microparametric approach (Baker 2008). The macroparametric difference is one between syntactic verb clustering versus a lack thereof (or restriction to below-word-level clustering, Kiss & van Rijmsdijk 2004): Kurmanji and German tend to distribute the functional categories of the verb system among several verbal elements (i.e. a combination of lexical verbs and auxiliaries), while Turkish works agglutinatively in expressing roughly the same categories in one single verb. It is the former situation that potentially results in clustering effects; however, the agglutinative character of the Turkish verb system can result in clustering effects of a different order, with complex verb forms morphologically binding so much material that they end up adjacent to each other.
At the micro-parametric level, the paper looks at differences between languages that do use auxiliaries (e.g. van Craenenbroeck 2014), namely Kurmanji and German (Turkish to a much lesser extent), and at this level, the semantics of the auxiliaries comes into focus (e.g. Redder 1992, Kayne 2000: 107ff). In this connection, the paper compares, first, the derivation of auxiliaries from lexical material, and, second, types of semi-finite lexical forms (infinitives, participles, subjunctives) the auxiliaries combine with.
Research Interests: German Language, Syntax, Morphosyntax, Morphology, Turkish Linguistics, and 16 morePlurilingualism, Turkish Language, Morphology and Syntax, Linguistic Typology, Spoken language, Verbs, Multlingualism, Contrastive Linguistics, Trilingualism, Verb Clusters, Auxiliaries, Kurmanji Kurdish, Linguistic Repertoire, Kurdish linguistics, Kurmanji linguistics, and Immigrant Multilingualism
This study investigates phenomena of attributive junction in written Kurmanji. Attributive junction is conceptualized as a special case of linguistic ‘connectivity’ in the sense of Rehbein (1999), applying at syntactic levels below the NP... more
This study investigates phenomena of attributive junction in written Kurmanji. Attributive junction is conceptualized as a special case of linguistic ‘connectivity’ in the sense of Rehbein (1999), applying at syntactic levels below the NP node. In Kurmanji, as in other Iranian languages, attributes are linked to the nominals they modify (as well as to larger entities) by means of ezafe (Schroeder 1999, 2002; Samvelian 2008; Haig 2011). By contrast, ‘attributive junction’ is conceptualized as attribute linking other than by means of ezafe (with which it may interact), i.e. in terms of employments of syntactic junctors at the below-NP level.
The present study is theoretically contextualized in a framework of attributive junction and complexity research (Niemann & Hennig 2015). It looks at the use of different kinds of junctors and their employment in a small corpus of academic writing in Kurmanji Kurdish, focusing on the following phenomena:
− formal types of junction techniques: simple, polylexical, and paired junctors;
− attributive junction at different syntactic levels: between attributes (as ‘internal connections’ in the sense of Hennig 2015), between a nominal and its attribute(s) (‘external connections’), and between joint head nominals;
− coordinating versus subordinating junctors at the below-NP level.
While coordination is generally assumed to apply at a variety of syntactic (and discourse) levels, the range of subordination seems to be more limited and is generally analyzed as a clause-level phenomenon. However, recent studies discuss the possibility of an employment of syntactic subjunctors at the level under investigation (e.g. Hennig 2015a, b and some literature cited there); this discussion is related to discussions of analogy between nominal and verbal/clausal structures (Szabolcsi 1990, Czicza 2015). One problem in this connection has been to work out criteria of ‘subordination’ for non-clausal syntactic levels, which may have to rely on semantic rather than syntactic categories.
The present study is theoretically contextualized in a framework of attributive junction and complexity research (Niemann & Hennig 2015). It looks at the use of different kinds of junctors and their employment in a small corpus of academic writing in Kurmanji Kurdish, focusing on the following phenomena:
− formal types of junction techniques: simple, polylexical, and paired junctors;
− attributive junction at different syntactic levels: between attributes (as ‘internal connections’ in the sense of Hennig 2015), between a nominal and its attribute(s) (‘external connections’), and between joint head nominals;
− coordinating versus subordinating junctors at the below-NP level.
While coordination is generally assumed to apply at a variety of syntactic (and discourse) levels, the range of subordination seems to be more limited and is generally analyzed as a clause-level phenomenon. However, recent studies discuss the possibility of an employment of syntactic subjunctors at the level under investigation (e.g. Hennig 2015a, b and some literature cited there); this discussion is related to discussions of analogy between nominal and verbal/clausal structures (Szabolcsi 1990, Czicza 2015). One problem in this connection has been to work out criteria of ‘subordination’ for non-clausal syntactic levels, which may have to rely on semantic rather than syntactic categories.
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This paper investigates the comprehension of complex concatenated talk in elicited family interaction, in a longitudinal corpus (over 200,000 utterances) collected in some 20 families in Germany and in Turkey each. The children are second... more
This paper investigates the comprehension of complex concatenated talk in elicited family interaction, in a longitudinal corpus (over 200,000 utterances) collected in some 20 families in Germany and in Turkey each. The children are second or third-generation bilingual speakers. While the data suggest some loss of productive abilities and reinterpretations of forms, receptive competences seem stable, including complex constructions.
The present study reconstructs processes of (non-)understanding in discourse constellations with the adult generation speaking Turkish and children present as listeners. Complexity is operationalised morpho-syntactically and contentwise in terms of concatenated actants and events.
Methodologically, citeria for identifying hearer activities of the ‘communicative apparatus’, particularly ‘ensuring of mutual understanding’ and other signals of complete or partial (non-)understanding are tested (Kameyama 2004, Zeevaert 2007, Rehbein, ten Thije & Verschik 2012, Rehbein & Romaniuk 2014). The data are searched for passages in which (mainly) adults employ typologically challening complex constructions, and these passages are discourse-analytically interpreted, applying methods of ‘Pragmatic Corpus Analysis’.
While the data do display some of the phenomena described in the literature, children additionally attempt to regain control over the thematic organisation of the narratives, rejecting the listener role in favour of a speaker role, adapting the choice of conversational subtopics to their own needs, interests and possibilities, verbalising issues outside the topics chosen by the adults, eliciting clarifications from the adults, signalling repaired understanding, and other phenomena. The paper systematises these observations in an attempt to model both age-related and individual variation.
The present study reconstructs processes of (non-)understanding in discourse constellations with the adult generation speaking Turkish and children present as listeners. Complexity is operationalised morpho-syntactically and contentwise in terms of concatenated actants and events.
Methodologically, citeria for identifying hearer activities of the ‘communicative apparatus’, particularly ‘ensuring of mutual understanding’ and other signals of complete or partial (non-)understanding are tested (Kameyama 2004, Zeevaert 2007, Rehbein, ten Thije & Verschik 2012, Rehbein & Romaniuk 2014). The data are searched for passages in which (mainly) adults employ typologically challening complex constructions, and these passages are discourse-analytically interpreted, applying methods of ‘Pragmatic Corpus Analysis’.
While the data do display some of the phenomena described in the literature, children additionally attempt to regain control over the thematic organisation of the narratives, rejecting the listener role in favour of a speaker role, adapting the choice of conversational subtopics to their own needs, interests and possibilities, verbalising issues outside the topics chosen by the adults, eliciting clarifications from the adults, signalling repaired understanding, and other phenomena. The paper systematises these observations in an attempt to model both age-related and individual variation.
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This paper is a qualitative analysis of converb constructions as occurring in a corpus of monolingual and bilingual child-adult interactions including elicited narratives and other discourse types (Rehbein 2009, Rehbein, Herkenrath &... more
This paper is a qualitative analysis of converb constructions as occurring in a corpus of monolingual and bilingual child-adult interactions including elicited narratives and other discourse types (Rehbein 2009, Rehbein, Herkenrath & Karakoç 2009a). The general research context is a working hypothesis related to several types of functional change traceable in the bilingual Turkish data of the corpus (Rehbein 2001, Rehbein, Herkenrath & Karakoç 2009b).
A previously conducted quantitative study (Rehbein & Herkenrath 2014) suggests that converbs are somewhat on the decline under contact influence from German, a language lacking converbs. The present study reinvestigates a hypothesis, forwarded by Rehbein (1999), pertaining to the loss of an overtly realised valency structure, eventually leading to an arguably ‘particle-like’ employment of converbs under contact influence.
The investigation is based on a concordance obtained through a search on the bilingual and monolingual ENDFAS/SKOBI data, comprising some 3,000 findings of Turkish converb constructions involving the suffixes -(y)Ip, -(y)IncA, -(y)ArAk, -(y)ken, -(y)AlI, -(y)A -(y)A, and -V°r -mAz. While the more longitudinal aim is to quantify realisations of valency structure over the entire concordance, the present study problematises some issues of categorisation as they arise in view of the complexity of the discourse constellations.
More specifically, the paper attempts to find ways of teasing apart potentially innovative employments of valency-reduced converbs from a sharing of arguments that comes with converbial linking independently of contact influence.
A previously conducted quantitative study (Rehbein & Herkenrath 2014) suggests that converbs are somewhat on the decline under contact influence from German, a language lacking converbs. The present study reinvestigates a hypothesis, forwarded by Rehbein (1999), pertaining to the loss of an overtly realised valency structure, eventually leading to an arguably ‘particle-like’ employment of converbs under contact influence.
The investigation is based on a concordance obtained through a search on the bilingual and monolingual ENDFAS/SKOBI data, comprising some 3,000 findings of Turkish converb constructions involving the suffixes -(y)Ip, -(y)IncA, -(y)ArAk, -(y)ken, -(y)AlI, -(y)A -(y)A, and -V°r -mAz. While the more longitudinal aim is to quantify realisations of valency structure over the entire concordance, the present study problematises some issues of categorisation as they arise in view of the complexity of the discourse constellations.
More specifically, the paper attempts to find ways of teasing apart potentially innovative employments of valency-reduced converbs from a sharing of arguments that comes with converbial linking independently of contact influence.
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Dieser Vortrag beschäftigt sich mit Verfahren der thematischen Organisation in im Ruhrgebiet erhobenen mündlichen Erzählungen erwachsener Sprecher. Dabei werden die linguistischen Ressourcen untersucht, die monolinguale und multilinguale... more
Dieser Vortrag beschäftigt sich mit Verfahren der thematischen Organisation in im Ruhrgebiet erhobenen mündlichen Erzählungen erwachsener Sprecher. Dabei werden die linguistischen Ressourcen untersucht, die monolinguale und multilinguale Sprecher einsetzen, um Redegegenstände einzuführen, fortzuführen, zu unterteilen sowie zu dethematisieren.
Das Konzept der ‘thematischen Organisation’ bezieht sich auf die Steuerung der Höreraufmerksamkeit durch eine Reihe von Thematisierungen und Dethematisierungen im Laufe einer mündlichen Erzählung (Hoffmann 1997, 2000, 2002, Rehbein 2002: 14ff, Givón 1983, Chafe 1994 etc.) und wird als eine Gruppe von Verfahren betrachtet, die die interaktiven Zwecke beim Erzählen sprachlich umsetzt (e.g. Rehbein 2007, Fienemann 2006). In diesem Sinn geht es um wissensverarbeitende Prozeduren in einem funktional-pragmatischen Sinn, die es dem Hörer ermöglichen, fokus-sierte Elemente neu verbalisierten Wissens in ein bereits aufgebautes Diskurswissen zu integrieren.
Formal geht es dabei um morphosyntaktische Mittel, wie deiktische und phorische Verfahren sowie eine Reihe syntaktischer Positionen, die (In-)Definitheit, Topikalität oder Fokus markieren. Diese Mittel können, typologisch bedingt, morphologisch ge-bunden oder frei auftreten und einen referenziellen Skopus sowohl äußerungsintern als auch auf Diskursebene entfalten.
Die Untersuchung erarbeitet Porträts multilingualer Kompetenzen, die, typologisch divers, folgende sprachliche Systeme umfasen: Deutsch als monolinguale und bilinguale L1, Deutsch als L2 sowie Türkisch.
Das Konzept der ‘thematischen Organisation’ bezieht sich auf die Steuerung der Höreraufmerksamkeit durch eine Reihe von Thematisierungen und Dethematisierungen im Laufe einer mündlichen Erzählung (Hoffmann 1997, 2000, 2002, Rehbein 2002: 14ff, Givón 1983, Chafe 1994 etc.) und wird als eine Gruppe von Verfahren betrachtet, die die interaktiven Zwecke beim Erzählen sprachlich umsetzt (e.g. Rehbein 2007, Fienemann 2006). In diesem Sinn geht es um wissensverarbeitende Prozeduren in einem funktional-pragmatischen Sinn, die es dem Hörer ermöglichen, fokus-sierte Elemente neu verbalisierten Wissens in ein bereits aufgebautes Diskurswissen zu integrieren.
Formal geht es dabei um morphosyntaktische Mittel, wie deiktische und phorische Verfahren sowie eine Reihe syntaktischer Positionen, die (In-)Definitheit, Topikalität oder Fokus markieren. Diese Mittel können, typologisch bedingt, morphologisch ge-bunden oder frei auftreten und einen referenziellen Skopus sowohl äußerungsintern als auch auf Diskursebene entfalten.
Die Untersuchung erarbeitet Porträts multilingualer Kompetenzen, die, typologisch divers, folgende sprachliche Systeme umfasen: Deutsch als monolinguale und bilinguale L1, Deutsch als L2 sowie Türkisch.
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This paper studies narrative practices and competences in Turkish-speaking families in Germany versus in Turkey. Despite some apparent loss of productive abilities in subordinating morphology, interesting phenomena emerge longitudinally... more
This paper studies narrative practices and competences in Turkish-speaking families in Germany versus in Turkey. Despite some apparent loss of productive abilities in subordinating morphology, interesting phenomena emerge longitudinally at the borderline between receptivity and productivity. These phenomena are discussed in light of language-biographical information from questionnaires and ethnographic field notes on communicative styles in individual families and mother-tongue support received at school.
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This paper is a pilot study aiming to look at the use of Kurdish in multilingual constellations in Germany. It is part of a larger study, started on the basis of German and Turkish narrative data and looking at three generations of adult... more
This paper is a pilot study aiming to look at the use of Kurdish in multilingual constellations in Germany. It is part of a larger study, started on the basis of German and Turkish narrative data and looking at three generations of adult speakers, in an attempt to document multilingual linguistic ressources as operationalised in terms of linguistic means of thematic organisation (Herkenrath 2009, 2012a, b, in preparation).
The first data emerge from a collection of thematically focused autobiographical narratives, carried out as part of the Dortmund LiLaC project as well as at its margins, and documented in what has come to be treated as two distinct corpora: (1) the LiLaC Corpus (Quasthoff et al., in preparation), containing 73 mostly German conversations and (2) the LiLaC Shadow Corpus (Herkenrath, in preparation), containing some 20 conversations realised mostly in Turkish and therefore not part of the LiLaC Corpus.
Next to some linguistic-biographical information relating to Kurdish, but given in Turkish or German, both corpora do contain Kurdish passages; for several reasons, however, these are scarce and highly experimental and must be regarded as pilot data. The next step now being undertaken has been to supplement these data with a small Kurdish multilingual corpus from Giessen and other places, collected with a comparable narrative impulse as well as, foreseeably, other concepts of elicitation to be further developed during field work. This project is at the moment at a stage of renewed field-methodological reflections; some first data will tentatively be presented.
The present study thus has to take a very modest approach: it will look at the Kurdish data up to now available, not yet analysing thematic organisation in Kurdish, but rather problematising some interactive aspects that emerge in connection with matters of language choice and listening comprehension, as well as some information gathered from the linguistic-biographical passages.
The first data emerge from a collection of thematically focused autobiographical narratives, carried out as part of the Dortmund LiLaC project as well as at its margins, and documented in what has come to be treated as two distinct corpora: (1) the LiLaC Corpus (Quasthoff et al., in preparation), containing 73 mostly German conversations and (2) the LiLaC Shadow Corpus (Herkenrath, in preparation), containing some 20 conversations realised mostly in Turkish and therefore not part of the LiLaC Corpus.
Next to some linguistic-biographical information relating to Kurdish, but given in Turkish or German, both corpora do contain Kurdish passages; for several reasons, however, these are scarce and highly experimental and must be regarded as pilot data. The next step now being undertaken has been to supplement these data with a small Kurdish multilingual corpus from Giessen and other places, collected with a comparable narrative impulse as well as, foreseeably, other concepts of elicitation to be further developed during field work. This project is at the moment at a stage of renewed field-methodological reflections; some first data will tentatively be presented.
The present study thus has to take a very modest approach: it will look at the Kurdish data up to now available, not yet analysing thematic organisation in Kurdish, but rather problematising some interactive aspects that emerge in connection with matters of language choice and listening comprehension, as well as some information gathered from the linguistic-biographical passages.
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This paper investigates the use of the discourse particle işte in the Eskişehir conversations published in Özcan, Keçik & Jørgensen (2010), from a functional-pragmatic analytical perspective. The approach is comparative in throwing a side... more
This paper investigates the use of the discourse particle işte in the Eskişehir conversations published in Özcan, Keçik & Jørgensen (2010), from a functional-pragmatic analytical perspective. The approach is comparative in throwing a side glance at the use of işte in the ENDFAS/SKOBI data (Rehbein 2009, Rehbein, Herkenrath & Karakoç 2009). By hypothesis, the two corpora contain different types of dis-course, unfolding different aspects of the functional potential of işte.
As analysed for the ENDFAS/SKOBI data (Herkenrath 2007), işte works on a biprocedural basis, combining deictic with incitive qualities. While the deictic prodecure points at some real object or ele-ment of knowledge in one of several deictic spaces (perception space, imagination space, or discour-se space, e.g. Ehlich 1979, 1982), the incitive procedure instructs the hearer to assume the element in question as something known. In passages of concatenated speech, işte is employed to coordinate elements of knowledge at the level of larger chunks of discourse, serving a discourse-coordinating function in the sense of Rehbein (1995, 2012). In a further “syntactified” use, by way of procedural expansion, işte is used as a coordinating expression, working not only above, but also below utterance level, i.e. connecting parts of utterances of diverse syntactic status. This latter usage, analysed as ‘para-operative’ in functional-pragmatic terms, is more prevalent in older children, Turkish-speaking children growing up in Turkey, and adults, being a function of complex narrative and connectivity-related competence.
In the Eskişehir data, by contrast, the situations recorded are primarily (but not exclusively) ones of ‘empractical discourse’ (Bühler 1934, Rehbein 2007), i.e. conversations with rapid turn taking and visually present objects of talk. This difference with respect to the situation of elicited narratives in the ENDFAS/SKOBI data has an effect on the ways işte is employed, leading to a greater frequency and differentiation of its deictic employments. The present talk thus takes a look at the Eskişehir data in order to explore in more detail the range of deictic qualities of işte, next to the functioning of işte in the neighbourhood of other deictic elements, as well as some uses where işte serves to connect talk about objects and ideas not visually present in the speech situation.
As analysed for the ENDFAS/SKOBI data (Herkenrath 2007), işte works on a biprocedural basis, combining deictic with incitive qualities. While the deictic prodecure points at some real object or ele-ment of knowledge in one of several deictic spaces (perception space, imagination space, or discour-se space, e.g. Ehlich 1979, 1982), the incitive procedure instructs the hearer to assume the element in question as something known. In passages of concatenated speech, işte is employed to coordinate elements of knowledge at the level of larger chunks of discourse, serving a discourse-coordinating function in the sense of Rehbein (1995, 2012). In a further “syntactified” use, by way of procedural expansion, işte is used as a coordinating expression, working not only above, but also below utterance level, i.e. connecting parts of utterances of diverse syntactic status. This latter usage, analysed as ‘para-operative’ in functional-pragmatic terms, is more prevalent in older children, Turkish-speaking children growing up in Turkey, and adults, being a function of complex narrative and connectivity-related competence.
In the Eskişehir data, by contrast, the situations recorded are primarily (but not exclusively) ones of ‘empractical discourse’ (Bühler 1934, Rehbein 2007), i.e. conversations with rapid turn taking and visually present objects of talk. This difference with respect to the situation of elicited narratives in the ENDFAS/SKOBI data has an effect on the ways işte is employed, leading to a greater frequency and differentiation of its deictic employments. The present talk thus takes a look at the Eskişehir data in order to explore in more detail the range of deictic qualities of işte, next to the functioning of işte in the neighbourhood of other deictic elements, as well as some uses where işte serves to connect talk about objects and ideas not visually present in the speech situation.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Deixis, Turkish Linguistics, Classroom Interaction, Turkish Language, and 14 moreSpoken language, Spatial deixis, Connectivity, Functional Pragmatics, Empractical Speech, Child Language, Discourse Deixis, Linguistic Connectivity, Functional Etymology, Interaction in Discourse, Linguistic Cohesion, Discourse Organization, monolingual Turkish, and Child Child Interaction
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Multilingualism, German Language, Turkish Linguistics, Autobiographical Self-Representation, Autobiographical Memory, and 18 moreTurkish Language, Kurdish Language, Bilingualism, Trilingualism, Multilingualism and Cognition across the lifespan, Trilingualism, Autobiographical Narrative Interview, Monolingualism, School experience, German Linguistics, Impersonality, Impersonal Constructions, Kurmanji Kurdish, Linguistic Biographies, Language Biographies, Kurdish linguistics, Kurdish-Turkish-German trilingualism, multilingual German, Multilingualism in Education, and Speaker Deixis
This study investigates multilingual language use in a corpus of autobiographical conversations including three generations of immigrants. Its main aim is to set up an inventory of a repertoire of means of expression spanning... more
This study investigates multilingual language use in a corpus of autobiographical conversations including three generations of immigrants. Its main aim is to set up an inventory of a repertoire of means of expression spanning typologically diverse constructions in Turkish, Kurmanji Kurdish, and German. The data show a variety of constellations of multilingualism, from Turkish as an L1 and German as an L2 via a variety of types of successive bilingualism to simultaneous bi- and trilingualism. In addition, informants have a history of adult multilingualism involving further languages, talked about albeit not used in the conversations. Based on qualitative analyses of the narratives, the categories for a typology are established in a data-driven approach.
The study relates language-biographical information retrievable from the narratives (about growing up bilingual, school experiences or – in the older generation – the lack thereof, memories of a situation of migration, memories of L2 acquisition, incipient bilingualism, other – highly individual – ways of becoming multilingual etc.) to formal characteristics.
The study relates language-biographical information retrievable from the narratives (about growing up bilingual, school experiences or – in the older generation – the lack thereof, memories of a situation of migration, memories of L2 acquisition, incipient bilingualism, other – highly individual – ways of becoming multilingual etc.) to formal characteristics.
Research Interests: Informal Learning, Pragmatics, Multilingualism, Sociolinguistics, Kurdish Studies, and 9 moreTurkish Linguistics, Learning in Informal Settings, Bilinguism and Multilinguism, Receptive multilingualism, Trilingualism, Autobiographical Narrative Interview, Linguistic Biographies, Kurdish linguistics, and Adult Bilingualism
This paper investigates the comprehension of syntactically subordinated constructions in monolingual and bilingual child Turkish. Turkish, a head-final language, expresses subordination morphologically on the verb, which then assumes... more
This paper investigates the comprehension of syntactically subordinated constructions in monolingual and bilingual child Turkish. Turkish, a head-final language, expresses subordination morphologically on the verb, which then assumes characteristics bordering on the finiteness/ nonfiniteness distinction (e.g. Borsley & Kornfilt 2000, Kornfilt 2007, Kornfilt & Whitman 2012). The constructions involved are head-final even in the CP area. The present study focuses on the morpheme -DIK, which has often been analysed as a ‘factive nominalizer’. -DIK combines with other morphemes (possessive agreement markers, case and sometimes postpositions expressing the type of embedding into a matrix clause) to form a range of functional types of subordinated constructions (a variety of complement clauses, attributive clauses, and adverbial clauses). It subtly contrasts with other nominalizing morphemes, such as -(y)AcAK, -mA, and -(y)Iş.
The data are narrative and other conversations elicited in family constellations, in a longitudinal corpus (over 200,000 utterances) collected in Germany and in Turkey. The children are second or third-generation bilingual speakers in the data from Germany and monolingual speakers of Turkish in the data from Turkey. While these data suggest some loss of productive abilities and reinterpretations of forms, receptive competences look more stable at first sight. They do, however, need a closer analysis.
The present study reconstructs processes of (non-)understanding in discourse contexts in which bilingual as well as monolingual Turkish children participate as listeners to adults who employ the constructions in question. Methodologically, citeria for identifying hearer activities of the ‘communicative apparatus’, particularly ‘ensuring of mutual understanding’ and other signals of complete or partial (non-)understanding are tested (Kameyama 2004, Zeevaert 2007, Rehbein, ten Thije & Verschik 2012, Rehbein & Romaniuk 2014). The data display some of the phenomena described in the literature. The children additionally attempt to regain control over the thematic organisation of the narratives in the vicinity of -DIK-constructions, rejecting the listener role in favour of a speaker role, adapting the choice of conversational subtopics to their own interests and possibilities, verbalising issues outside the topics chosen by the adults, eliciting clarifications from the adults, signalling repaired understanding etc.
The data are narrative and other conversations elicited in family constellations, in a longitudinal corpus (over 200,000 utterances) collected in Germany and in Turkey. The children are second or third-generation bilingual speakers in the data from Germany and monolingual speakers of Turkish in the data from Turkey. While these data suggest some loss of productive abilities and reinterpretations of forms, receptive competences look more stable at first sight. They do, however, need a closer analysis.
The present study reconstructs processes of (non-)understanding in discourse contexts in which bilingual as well as monolingual Turkish children participate as listeners to adults who employ the constructions in question. Methodologically, citeria for identifying hearer activities of the ‘communicative apparatus’, particularly ‘ensuring of mutual understanding’ and other signals of complete or partial (non-)understanding are tested (Kameyama 2004, Zeevaert 2007, Rehbein, ten Thije & Verschik 2012, Rehbein & Romaniuk 2014). The data display some of the phenomena described in the literature. The children additionally attempt to regain control over the thematic organisation of the narratives in the vicinity of -DIK-constructions, rejecting the listener role in favour of a speaker role, adapting the choice of conversational subtopics to their own interests and possibilities, verbalising issues outside the topics chosen by the adults, eliciting clarifications from the adults, signalling repaired understanding etc.
Research Interests: Turkish Linguistics, Language Acquisition and Development, Child Language Acqusition, Bilingualism and Multilingualism, Bilingualism, and 14 moreSubordination, Discourse Competence, Receptive multilingualism, Morpho-Syntax, Child Language Development, Listening, Listening Strategies, German Turkish Bilingualism, Head-Final Languages, Morphology of Subordination, Pre-Literacy Language Development, Child-Adult Interaction, Ensuring of Mutual Understanding, and Child Language Use
For the purposes of the present paper, ditransitive constructions are semantically defined as constructions in which a verb projects, next to a direct object, a recipient argument. Cross-linguistically, the linguistic expression of... more
For the purposes of the present paper, ditransitive constructions are semantically defined as constructions in which a verb projects, next to a direct object, a recipient argument. Cross-linguistically, the linguistic expression of recipient arguments makes use of formal means such as case-marking, syntactic positions, and the representation of actants on verb forms, among others; see Haspelmath 2005; Siewierska & Hollmann (2007); Malchukov, Haspelmath & Comrie (2010) for more specific typological classifications.
While in some languages, there are distinctive cases for the two argument roles, Kurdish has a rectus-obliquus case system, such that there is no case distinction usable for indirect objects. Recipient arguments are assigned oblique case under both present tense and past tense alignment (Dorleijn 1996, Haig 2008 on issues of alignment in Kurmanji and in a wider Iranian perspective). Their marking makes use of several additional devices, applied alternatively, in combination with oblique case: a postverbal position (example 1), adpositional constructions (example 2), a specification on the verb indicating the presence of an indirect object (example 3), as well as constructions presenting an indirect object as possessed by an abstract nominal, the latter in the role of a direct object incorporated into a light verb construction (example 4).
With respect to this overall picture, the following questions arise:
1. What determines the choice between these options? Are there any clear-cut semantic differences between them and is it possible to put these into a coherent system?
2. Is it possible to draw a clear-cut semantic distinction between recipient arguments receiving case directly from the verb and others that are complements of adpositions? Can the formal distinction be related to an argument versus non-argument status?
3. What about the suffixal ecoding of indirect objects on the verb? Can it be argued to be some kind of indirect object agreement or should it be analysed as a clitic? The present observation is that it hardly ever co-occurs with any indirect object represented as a full NP or as a deictic expression, but there seem to be exceptions (example 5). On the other hand, unlike the deictic expression that might serve as a candidate for its derivation, it displays no gender distinction.
4. As the three formal options mentioned can be found in both recipients and directives, they cannot be analysed as pertaining to ditransitivity alone, but rather as serving in a wider functional range. The form-function relation thus does not seem to be a very clear-cut one looked at from this side either.
While in some languages, there are distinctive cases for the two argument roles, Kurdish has a rectus-obliquus case system, such that there is no case distinction usable for indirect objects. Recipient arguments are assigned oblique case under both present tense and past tense alignment (Dorleijn 1996, Haig 2008 on issues of alignment in Kurmanji and in a wider Iranian perspective). Their marking makes use of several additional devices, applied alternatively, in combination with oblique case: a postverbal position (example 1), adpositional constructions (example 2), a specification on the verb indicating the presence of an indirect object (example 3), as well as constructions presenting an indirect object as possessed by an abstract nominal, the latter in the role of a direct object incorporated into a light verb construction (example 4).
With respect to this overall picture, the following questions arise:
1. What determines the choice between these options? Are there any clear-cut semantic differences between them and is it possible to put these into a coherent system?
2. Is it possible to draw a clear-cut semantic distinction between recipient arguments receiving case directly from the verb and others that are complements of adpositions? Can the formal distinction be related to an argument versus non-argument status?
3. What about the suffixal ecoding of indirect objects on the verb? Can it be argued to be some kind of indirect object agreement or should it be analysed as a clitic? The present observation is that it hardly ever co-occurs with any indirect object represented as a full NP or as a deictic expression, but there seem to be exceptions (example 5). On the other hand, unlike the deictic expression that might serve as a candidate for its derivation, it displays no gender distinction.
4. As the three formal options mentioned can be found in both recipients and directives, they cannot be analysed as pertaining to ditransitivity alone, but rather as serving in a wider functional range. The form-function relation thus does not seem to be a very clear-cut one looked at from this side either.
Research Interests:
Formally and typologically, Kurmanji is more or less SOV (depending on the kind of argument in-volved) and more or less wh-in-situ (sometimes having wh-expressions in positions associated with functional categories related to information... more
Formally and typologically, Kurmanji is more or less SOV (depending on the kind of argument in-volved) and more or less wh-in-situ (sometimes having wh-expressions in positions associated with functional categories related to information structure or knowledge processing in discourse). It has finite subordinate clauses and clause-initial, morphologically unbound complementizers (e.g. Bedirxan & Lescot 1971: 336f).
I am assuming that when wh-constructions are embedded as complements of verba sentiendi such as min dizanîbû ‘I knew’, min hesabên xwe dikir ‘I calculated’ oder nayê bîra min ‘I cannot remem-ber’, in wh-in-situ or quasi-wh-in-situ languages, the wh-element has no part in the process of sub-ordination, moving neither to C° nor to Spec of CP, but staying either in situ or in some intermedi-ate functional position it has moved to.
The complementation procedure in Kurmanji Kurdish is often realised by means of the same com-plementizer as in non-wh clauses, namely ku. Exemples (1) and (2) show complement clauses without and with wh, respectively.
There seems to exist, however, another complementizer, employed to embed just wh-constructions, as in example (3).
The research questions of the present paper concern the formal and functional distincton between ku and ka. With respect to ku, the situation seems to be more or less unproblematic in that ku can be analysed as a multifunctional, semantically neutral complementizer. One question that remains is which of its inherent functional features come into play when it is employed to embed wh-constructions (versus other constructions). By contrast, the issue of ka seems to be rather less clear. According to some dictionaries, ka is a kind of connector (bağlaç in Turkish) with, however, non-embedded usages, somewhat similar to Turkish hani (İzoli 1999: 219); the usages given might be interpreted as interrogative, or even imperative (hearer-directing in a Functional-Pragmatic sense). The entry in Omar (1992: 324) categorises ka as an interrogative pronoun, giving no ex-amples. Zana (1992/2005: 948), on the other hand, categorises ka as an adverb (hoker in Kurdish), listing a large number of usages and translating ka into Turkish mostly as hani or hele, see the examples (4) to (6).
Zana (1992/2005) also gives one example in which ka can be interpreted as subordinating an inter-rogative, albeit non-wh, construction, but none in which it subordinates a wh-construction. On the other hand, Zana gives several examples in which ka occurs together with a(nother) wh-expression; however, these co-occurrences all show up in non-embedded constructions.
All of these informations leave us with a still somewhat unclarified categorisation of ka, somewhere in between wh and something else and somewhere in between a subordinator and something else. Interestingly, none of the dictionaries considered so far so far seems to list ka as a complementizer at all.
The present paper takes a closer look at the functional spectrum of ka, asking which of its charac-teristics make it eligible for employment as a complementizer and also trying to tease out possible functional differences between ka and ku in contexts in which they are put to use in the embedding of wh-constructions.
The approach is empirical in compiling a fair number of (1) non-embedded wh-occurrences to save as an empirical basis for discussing the association of wh in Kurmanji with any given functional categories within the CP area, (2) wh complement clauses, (3) employments of ku in contexts other than wh complement clauses, (4) employments of ka in contexts other than wh complement clauses. The data are novels by Mehmet Uzun for the purposes of this pilot study.
Theoretically, the analysis makes use of the Functional-Pragmatic analytical tools of ‘procedural analysis’, ‘linguistic field’ and ‘field transpositions’ as developed by Rehbein, Ehlich and Redder in a number of papers, connecting this discussion to the formal, morpho-syntactic, one.
I am assuming that when wh-constructions are embedded as complements of verba sentiendi such as min dizanîbû ‘I knew’, min hesabên xwe dikir ‘I calculated’ oder nayê bîra min ‘I cannot remem-ber’, in wh-in-situ or quasi-wh-in-situ languages, the wh-element has no part in the process of sub-ordination, moving neither to C° nor to Spec of CP, but staying either in situ or in some intermedi-ate functional position it has moved to.
The complementation procedure in Kurmanji Kurdish is often realised by means of the same com-plementizer as in non-wh clauses, namely ku. Exemples (1) and (2) show complement clauses without and with wh, respectively.
There seems to exist, however, another complementizer, employed to embed just wh-constructions, as in example (3).
The research questions of the present paper concern the formal and functional distincton between ku and ka. With respect to ku, the situation seems to be more or less unproblematic in that ku can be analysed as a multifunctional, semantically neutral complementizer. One question that remains is which of its inherent functional features come into play when it is employed to embed wh-constructions (versus other constructions). By contrast, the issue of ka seems to be rather less clear. According to some dictionaries, ka is a kind of connector (bağlaç in Turkish) with, however, non-embedded usages, somewhat similar to Turkish hani (İzoli 1999: 219); the usages given might be interpreted as interrogative, or even imperative (hearer-directing in a Functional-Pragmatic sense). The entry in Omar (1992: 324) categorises ka as an interrogative pronoun, giving no ex-amples. Zana (1992/2005: 948), on the other hand, categorises ka as an adverb (hoker in Kurdish), listing a large number of usages and translating ka into Turkish mostly as hani or hele, see the examples (4) to (6).
Zana (1992/2005) also gives one example in which ka can be interpreted as subordinating an inter-rogative, albeit non-wh, construction, but none in which it subordinates a wh-construction. On the other hand, Zana gives several examples in which ka occurs together with a(nother) wh-expression; however, these co-occurrences all show up in non-embedded constructions.
All of these informations leave us with a still somewhat unclarified categorisation of ka, somewhere in between wh and something else and somewhere in between a subordinator and something else. Interestingly, none of the dictionaries considered so far so far seems to list ka as a complementizer at all.
The present paper takes a closer look at the functional spectrum of ka, asking which of its charac-teristics make it eligible for employment as a complementizer and also trying to tease out possible functional differences between ka and ku in contexts in which they are put to use in the embedding of wh-constructions.
The approach is empirical in compiling a fair number of (1) non-embedded wh-occurrences to save as an empirical basis for discussing the association of wh in Kurmanji with any given functional categories within the CP area, (2) wh complement clauses, (3) employments of ku in contexts other than wh complement clauses, (4) employments of ka in contexts other than wh complement clauses. The data are novels by Mehmet Uzun for the purposes of this pilot study.
Theoretically, the analysis makes use of the Functional-Pragmatic analytical tools of ‘procedural analysis’, ‘linguistic field’ and ‘field transpositions’ as developed by Rehbein, Ehlich and Redder in a number of papers, connecting this discussion to the formal, morpho-syntactic, one.