Clausal Complementation in Balkan Turkish

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Julian Rentzsch
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: from 2015 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 289433011

This project studies how clauses, i.e. syntactic entities minimally consisting of a predicate, are embedded into higher ranging structures in the Turkish varieties of the Balkan Peninsula. The distribution of finite and non-finite strategies of clausal complementation across the Balkan Turkish dialects is investigated on the basis of text corpuses recorded during the past hundred years by numerous researchers. The dialect-internal dissemination of competing or mutually exclusive complementation strategies as well as the diatopic distribution of these strategies are compared to the situation in the relevant contact languages - mainly in the standard languages, but wherever data is available also in the dialects of these languages. While the findings of the project will mainly reflect the synchronic situation, the research will also be an important step towards an investigation of the historical development and the question to which degree language contact, language-internal development and universal tendencies have contributed to the evolution of this situation. The project is relevant not only for Turkish studies but also potentially interesting for linguists interested in Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian and Albanian as well as in the typology of languages on the Balkan Peninsula.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: North Macedonia
• Host: Professorin Liljana Mitkovska