TY  - JOUR
A1  - Iefremenko, Kateryna
A1  - Schroeder, Christoph
A1  - Kornfilt, Jaklin
T1  - Converbs in heritage Turkish
BT  - a contrastive approach
JF  - Nordic journal of linguistics / publ. for The Nordic Association of Linguists
N2  - Turkish expresses adverbial subordination predominantly by means of converb clauses. These are headed by nonfinite verbs, i.e. converbs, which have a converb suffix attached to the stem. The different converbs express different aspectual relations between the subordinate and the superordinate clause, and they can be modifying or non-modifying. We analyse data from speakers of Turkish as a heritage language in Germany and the U.S. as well as monolingual speakers of Turkish in Turkey. The data come from two age groups: adults and adolescents. We show that unlike in canonical Turkish, converbs in heritage Turkish can be multifunctional, meaning that they can express both simultaneity and causality, for example. Furthermore, we show that converbs in heritage Turkish can be both modifying and non-modifying. As possible factors which might be responsible for such variation, we discuss language contact, sociolinguistic differences between the speaker communities (Germany vs. the U.S.) and age of the speakers.
KW  - adverbial clauses
KW  - converbs
KW  - heritage Turkish
KW  - majority English
KW  - majority German
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0332586521000160
SN  - 0332-5865
SN  - 1502-4717
VL  - 44
IS  - 2
SP  - 130
EP  - 154
PB  - Cambridge Univ. Press
CY  - Cambridge
ER  -