Structure of Heritage Turkish

Undergraduate / Graduate

Modern) Turkish is a heavily agglutinating (suffixing) Turkic language (Altaic) with basic SOV word order (head final) as well as vowel harmony. The total number of L1 and L2 speakers of Turkish is estimated to be more than 90 million, including a large immigrant community residing in mainly Europe. The aim of this course is two-fold: Firstly, we will examine the structural properties of Turkish by way of engaging in linguistic fieldwork with native speakers. This will allow us to improve our analytical thinking and problem solving skills and familiarize us with the workings of a non-Indo-European language. Then, we will focus on the differences between Turkish as spoken in the mainland (Türkiye) and heritage Turkish as spoken by Turkish speaking immigrants in Europe. In doing so, we will investigate the role of socio-economic and political factors in shaping the grammatical and structural properties of languages.