@phdthesis{Atasoy2022,
  author    = {Atasoy, Atilla},
  title     = {Production, perception, and processing of focus in Turkish},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-54815},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-548156},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xxiii, 267},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {The main goal of this dissertation is to experimentally investigate how focus is realised, perceived, and processed by native Turkish speakers, independent of preconceived notions of positional restrictions. Crucially, there are various issues and scientific debates surrounding focus in the Turkish language in the existing literature (chapter 1). It is argued in this dissertation that two factors led to the stagnant literature on focus in Turkish: the lack of clearly defined, modern understandings of information structure and its fundamental notion of focus, and the ongoing and ill-defined debate surrounding the question of whether there is an immediately preverbal focus position in Turkish. These issues gave rise to specific research questions addressed across this dissertation. Specifically, we were interested in how the focus dimensions such as focus size (comparing narrow constituent and broad sentence focus), focus target (comparing narrow subject and narrow object focus), and focus type (comparing new-information and contrastive focus) affect Turkish focus realisation and, in turn, focus comprehension when speakers are provided syntactic freedom to position focus as they see fit. To provide data on these core goals, we presented three behavioural experiments based on a systematic framework of information structure and its notions (chapter 2): (i) a production task with trigger wh-questions and contextual animations manipulated to elicit the focus dimensions of interest (chapter 3), (ii) a timed acceptability judgment task in listening to the recorded answers in our production task (chapter 4), and (iii) a self-paced reading task to gather on-line processing data (chapter 5). Based on the results of the conducted experiments, multiple conclusions are made in this dissertation (chapter 6). Firstly, this dissertation demonstrated empirically that there is no focus position in Turkish, neither in the sense of a strict focus position language nor as a focally loaded position facilitating focus perception and/or processing. While focus is, in fact, syntactically variable in the Turkish preverbal area, this is a consequence of movement triggered by other IS aspects like topicalisation and backgrounding, and the observational markedness of narrow subject focus compared to narrow object focus. As for focus type in Turkish, this dimension is not associated with word order in production, perception, or processing. Significant acoustic correlates of focus size (broad sentence focus vs narrow constituent focus) and focus target (narrow subject focus vs narrow object focus) were observed in fundamental frequency and intensity, representing focal boost, (postfocal) deaccentuation, and the presence or absence of a phrase-final rise in the prenucleus, while the perceivability of these effects remains to be investigated. In contrast, no acoustic correlates of focus type in simple, three-word transitive structures were observed, with focus types being interchangeable in mismatched question-answer pairs. Overall, the findings of this dissertation highlight the need for experimental investigations regarding focus in Turkish, as theoretical predictions do not necessarily align with experimental data. As such, the fallacy of implying causation from correlation should be strictly kept in mind, especially when constructions coincide with canonical structures, such as the immediately preverbal position in narrow object foci. Finally, numerous open questions remain to be explored, especially as focus and word order in Turkish are multifaceted. As shown, givenness is a confounding factor when investigating focus types, while thematic role assignment potentially confounds word order preferences. Further research based on established, modern information structure frameworks is needed, with chapter 5 concluding with specific recommendations for such future research.},
  language  = {en}
}
@techreport{BommesOlfertŞimşeketal.2020,
  author    = {Bommes, Michael and Olfert, Helena and Şim{\c{s}}ek, Yazg{\"u}l and Mehlem, Ulrich and Boneß, Anja and Ayan, M{\"u}ge and Ko{\c{c}}ba{\c{s}}, Dilara},
  title     = {Literacy acquisition in schools in the context of migration and multilingualism},
  editor    = {Schroeder, Christoph and S{\"u}rig, Inken},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-47179},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-471793},
  pages     = {579},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {Literacy acquisition is one of the primary goals of school education, and usually it takes place in the national language of the respective country. At the same time, schools accommodate pupils with different home languages who might or might not be fluent in the national language and who start from other linguistic backgrounds in their acquisition of literacy. While it is safe to say that schools with a monolingual policy are not prepared to deal with the factual multilingualism in their classrooms in a systematic way, bilingual pupils have to deal with it nonetheless. The interdisciplinary and comparative research project "Literacy Acquisition in Schools in the Context of Migration and Multilingualism" (LAS) investigated the practical processes of literacy acquisition in two countries, Germany and Turkey, where the monolingual orientation of schools is as much a reality as are the multilingual backgrounds of many of their pupils. The basic assumption was that pupils cope with the ways they are engaged by the school - both socially and academically - based on their cultural and linguistic repertoires acquired biographically, providing them with more or less productive options regarding the acquisition of literary skills. By comparing the literary development of bilingual children with that of their monolingual classmates throughout one school year in the first and the seventh grade in Germany and Turkey, respectively, we found out that the restricting potential of multilingualism is located rather on the part of the schools than on the part of the pupils. While the individual bilingual pupil almost naturally uses his/her home language as a resource for literacy acquisition in the school language, schools still tend to regard the multilingual backgrounds of their pupils as irrelevant or even as an impediment to adequate schooling. We argue that by ignoring or even suppressing the specific linguistic potentials of bilingualism, bilingual pupils are put at a structural disadvantage. This research report is the slightly revised but full version of the final study project report from 2011 that was until now not available as a quotable publication. While several years have passed since the primary research was finalized, the addressed issues have lost none of their relevance. The report is accompanied by numerous publications in the frame of the LAS project, as well as by a web page (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/daf/projekte/las), which also contains the presentations from the final LAS-Conference, including valuable discussions of the report from renowed experts in the field.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Kuehn2016,
  author    = {K{\"u}hn, Jane},
  title     = {Functionally-driven language change},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-42207},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-422079},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {369},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Since the 1960ies, Germany has been host to a large Turkish immigrant community. While migrant communities often shift to the majority language over the course of time, Turkish is a very vital minority language in Germany and bilingualism in this community is an obvious fact which has been subject to several studies. The main focus usually is on German, the second language (L2) of these speakers (e.g. Hinnenkamp 2000, Keim 2001, Auer 2003, Cindark \& Aslan (2004), Kern \& Selting 2006, Selting 2009, Kern 2013). Research on the Turkish spoken by Turkish bilinguals has also attracted attention although to a lesser extend mainly in the framework of so called heritage language research (cf. Polinski 2011). Bilingual Turkish has been investigated under the perspective of code-switching and codemixing (e.g. Kallmeyer \& Keim 2003, Keim 2003, 2004, Keim \& Cindark 2003, Hinnenkamp 2003, 2005, 2008, Dirim \& Auer 2004), and with respect to changes in the morphologic, the syntactic and the orthographic system (e.g. Rehbein \& Karako{\c{c}} 2004, Schroeder 2007). Attention to the changes in the prosodic system of bilingual Turkish on the other side has been exceptional so far (Queen 2001, 2006). With the present dissertation, I provide a study on contact induced linguistic changes on the prosodic level in the Turkish heritage language of adult early German-Turkish bilinguals. It describes structural changes in the L1 Turkish intonation of yes/no questions of a representative sample of bilingual Turkish speakers. All speakers share a similar sociolinguistic background. All acquired Turkish as their first language from their families and the majority language German as an early L2 at latest in the kinder garden by the age of 3. A study of changes in bilingual varieties requires a previous cross-linguistic comparison of both of the involved languages in language contact in order to draw conclusions on the contact-induced language change in delimitation to language-internal development. While German is one of the best investigated languages with respect to its prosodic system, research on Turkish intonational phonology is not as progressed. To this effect, the analysis of bilingual Turkish, as elicited for the present dissertation, is preceded by an experimental study on monolingual Turkish. In this regard an additional experiment with 11 monolingual university students of non-linguistic subjects was conducted at the Ege University in Izmir in 2013. On these grounds the present dissertation additionally contributes new insights with respect to Turkish intonational phonology and typology. The results of the contrastive analysis of German and Turkish bring to light that the prosodic systems of both languages differ with respect to the use of prosodic cues in the marking of information structure (IS) and sentence type. Whereas German distinguishes in the prosodic marking between explicit categories for focus and givenness, Turkish uses only one prosodic cue to mark IS. Furthermore it is shown that Turkish in contrast to German does not use a prosodic correlate to mark yes/no questions, but a morphological question marker. To elicit Turkish yes/no questions in a bilingual context which differ with respect to their information structure in a further step the methodology of Xu (1999) to elicit in-situ focus on different constituents was adapted in the experimental study. A data set of 400 Turkish yes/no questions of 20 bilingual Turkish speakers was compiled at the Zentrum f{\"u}r Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin and at the University of Potsdam in 2013. The prosodic structure of the yes/no questions was phonologically and phonetically analyzed with respect to changes in the f0 contour according to IS modifications and the use of prosodic cues to indicate sentence type. The results of the analyses contribute surprising observations to the research of bilingual prosody. Studies on bilingual language change and language acquisition have repeatedly shown that the use of prosodic features that are considered as marked by means of lower and implicational use across and within a language cause difficulties in language contact and second language acquisition. Especially, they are not expected to pass from one language to another through language contact. However, this structurally determined expectation on language development is refuted by the results of the present study. Functionally related prosody, such as the cues to indicate IS, are transferred from German L2 to the Turkish L1 of German-Turkish bilingual speakers. This astonishing observation provides the base for an approach to language change centered on functional motivation. Based on Matras' (2007, 2010) assumption of functionality in language change, Paradis' (1993, 2004, 2008) approach of Language Activation and the Subsystem Theory and the Theory of Language as a Dynamic System (Heredina \& Jessner 2002), it will be shown that prosodic features which are absent in one of the languages of bilingual speech communities are transferred from the respective language to the other when they contribute to the contextualization of a pragmatic concept which is not expressed by other linguistic means in the target language. To this effect language interaction is based on language activation and inhibition mechanisms dealing with differences in the implicit pragmatic knowledge between bilinguals and monolinguals. The motivator for this process of language change is the contextualization of the message itself and not the structure of the respective feature on the surface. It is shown that structural consideration may influence language change but that bilingual language change does not depend on structural restrictions nor does the structure cause a change. The conclusions drawn on the basis of empirical facts can especially contribute to a better understanding of the processes of bilingual language development as it combines methodologies and theoretical aspects of different linguistic subfields.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Bracker2016,
  author    = {Bracker, Philip},
  title     = {Die Entstehung ethnischer Identit{\"a}t bei „Menschen mit t{\"u}rkischem Migrationshintergrund"},
  series = {Mehrsprachigkeit},
  journal   = {Mehrsprachigkeit},
  number    = {44},
  publisher = {Waxmann},
  address   = {M{\"u}nster},
  isbn      = {978-3-8309-3580-3},
  issn      = {1433-0792},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {285},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Begriffe wie „T{\"u}rken", „Menschen mit t{\"u}rkischem Migrationshintergrund", etc., die in vielen Bereichen des Lebens verwendet werden, sind Ausdruck der vorliegenden Differenzordnungen und Machtstrukturen und k{\"o}nnen diskriminierend wirken. Das ist z.B. dann der Fall, wenn bestimmte Begriffe verwendet werden, obwohl eine Kontextrelevanz nicht unbedingt vorliegt. Einige ethnische Bezeichnungen werden dabei h{\"a}ufiger verwendet als andere, trotz vergleichbarer Kontextrelevanz: „t{\"u}rkische/arabische Kinder" aber nicht „englische/spanische Kinder" (Wiese 2012), „Deutsch-T{\"u}rke" Mesut {\"O}zil aber nicht „Deutsch-Tunesier" Sami Khedira. Erst die Bezeichnungen schaffen hier die Subjekte. Die besondere Auszeichnung macht es in der Folge m{\"o}glich, dass ihnen Eigenschaften zugeschrieben werden (do Mar Castro Varela/Dhawan 2004). Aus Studien geht hervor, dass Ethnisierung mit Unterschichtung (Hormel 2007) in Verbindung gebracht wird und Begriffe wie „Migrant" mit negativen Eigenschaften (Scarvagliere/Zech 2013). Durch die Auszeichnung von Abweichungen von dem von der Mehrheit definierten unmarkierten Normalfall wird eine Differenzordnung (Mecheril/Melter 2012) hergestellt, die das vermeintliche Anders-Sein ins Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit r{\"u}ckt. Folgen sind Abwertung bestimmter (Erst-)Sprachen, Unterwerfung durch Beschreibungspraxen und Restriktionen auf dem Feld der Repr{\"a}sentation (Broden/Mecheril 2007). Ausgehend von diesen {\"U}berlegungen wird in der Arbeit „Ethnizit{\"a}t" diskutiert, worauf viele dieser Bezeichnungen rekurrieren. Barth (1969, 1994) stellt fest, dass Ethnizit{\"a}t der Abgrenzung dient und Zugeh{\"o}rigkeit zu ethnische Gruppen durch kategoriale Selbst- und Fremdzuschreibungen bestimmt wird. Brubaker (2004) folgert daher, dass „Gruppen" nur in Form von Vorstellungen existieren, die Individuen davon haben und diese Subjektivit{\"a}t zu unterschiedlichen Konstruktionen ethnischer Identit{\"a}t f{\"u}hrt. Dementsprechend k{\"o}nnen auch „multiple ethnische Identit{\"a}ten" (Keupp 2002) und „Hybridit{\"a}ten" (Foroutan 2013) das Ergebnis der individuellen Konstruktion sein, ohne dass diese Formen gemeinhin akzeptierte Bezeichnungen darstellen. Um die individuelle Entstehung ethnischer Identit{\"a}t nachvollziehen zu k{\"o}nnen, werden in der Arbeit Spracherwerbsgeschichten analysiert, da verschiedene Studien nahelegen, dass das Sprechen einer Sprache in engem Zusammenhang zur Ethnizit{\"a}t steht. Ohm (2008) zeigt, dass Zweitsprachenerwerb mit Identit{\"a}tsprozessen in einem wechselseitigen Bedingungsverh{\"a}ltnis steht. Giles/Bourhis/Taylor (1977: 326) zeigen anhand von Untersuchungen in mehrsprachigen Gebieten wie Quebec und Wales, dass Sprache enger mit ethnischer Identit{\"a}t verbunden ist als Nationalit{\"a}t oder „Kultur". Rosenberg (2015) f{\"u}hrt am Beispiel der ehemaligen UdSSR auf, dass das Sprechen einer Sprache gleichbedeutend mit dem Zugeh{\"o}rigkeit zu einer ethnischen „Gruppe" war. Sprache greift auch als Ausschlusskriterium: Nur wer eine Sprache gut spricht, darf die damit verbundene Identit{\"a}t in Anspruch nehmen (Schroeder/Dollnick, 2013: 104). Mithilfe der Methode des narrativen Interviews k{\"o}nnen Spracherwerbsgeschichten produziert, und individuelle kognitive Perspektiven und gesellschaftliche Prozesse aufgedeckt werden. In der Analyse k{\"o}nnen vier Wege der Entstehung ethnischer Identit{\"a}t unterschieden werden: I. Ethnizit{\"a}t als prim{\"a}re und dauerhafte Dimension, II. Multiple ethnische Identit{\"a}t, III. Unmarkierte ethnische Identit{\"a}t, IV. Selbstbestimmtheit. So kommt die Untersuchung zu dem Schluss, dass Ethnische Identit{\"a}t bei „Menschen mit t{\"u}rkischem Migrationshintergrund" durch individuelle Erfahrungen entsteht, sich ver{\"a}ndern und Mehrfachzugeh{\"o}rigkeiten oder Hybridit{\"a}ten zulassen kann. Dieses Ergebnis widerspricht dem allt{\"a}glichen Gebrauch bestimmter Begriffe und stellt damit g{\"a}ngige Bezeichnungsweisen und Differenzordnungen in Frage.},
  language  = {de}
}
@book{SchroederSchellhardtAkincietal.2015,
  author    = {Schroeder, Christoph and Schellhardt, Christin and Akinci, Mehmet-Ali and Dollnick, Meral and Dux, Ginesa and G{\"u}lbeyaz, Esin I{\c{s}}{\i}l and J{\"a}hnert, Anne and Ko{\c{c}}-G{\"u}lt{\"u}rk, Ceren and K{\"u}hmstedt, Patrick and Kuhn, Florian and Mezger, Verena and Pfaff, Carol and {\"U}rkmez, Bet{\"u}l Sena},
  title     = {MULTILIT},
  editor    = {Schroeder, Christoph and Schellhardt, Christin},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-80390},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {This paper presents an overview of the linguistic analyses developed in the MULTILIT project and the processing of the oral and written texts collected. The project investigates the language abilities of multilingual children and adolescents, in particular, those who have Turkish and/or Kurdish as a mother tongue. A further aim of the project is to examine from a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspective the extent to which competence in academic registers is achieved on the basis of the languages spoken by the children, including the language(s) spoken at the home, the language of the country of residence and the first foreign language. To be able to examine these questions using corpus linguistic parameters, we created categories of analysis in MULTILIT. The data collection comprises texts from bilingual and monolingual children and adolescents in Germany in their first language Turkish, their second language German und their foreign language English. Pupils aged between nine and twenty years of age produced monologue oral and written texts in the two genres of narrative and discursive. On the basis of these samples, we examine linguistic features such as lexical expression (lexical density, lexical diversity), syntactic complexity (syntactic and discursive packaging) as well as phonology in the oral texts and orthography in the written texts, with the aim of investigating the pupils' growing mastery of these features in academic and informal registers. To this end the raw data have been transcribed by the use of transcription conventions developed especially for the needs of the MULTILIT data. They are based on the commonly used HIAT and GAT transcription conventions and supplemented with conventions that provide additional information such as features at the graphic level. The categories of analysis comprise a large number of linguistic categories such as word classes, syntax, noun phrase complexity, complex verbal morphology, direct speech and text structures. We also annotate errors and norm deviations at a wide range of levels (orthographic, morphological, lexical, syntactic and textual). In view of the different language systems, these criteria are considered separately for all languages investigated in the project.},
  language  = {en}
}