This volume is a collection of studies on various aspects of word order variation in Turkish. As a head-final, left-branching ‘free’ word order language, Turkish raises a number of significant theory-internal as well as language-particular questions regarding linearization in language. Each of the contributions in the present volume offers a fresh insight into a number of these questions, thus, while expanding our knowledge of the language-particular properties of the word order phenomena, also contribute individually to the theory of linearization in general. Turkish is a configurational language. It licenses constructions in which constituents can occur in non-canonical presubject as well as postverbal positions. Presented within the assumptions of the generative tradition, the discussion and analyses of the various aspects of the linearization facts of the language offer a novel treatment of the issues therein. The authors approach the word order phenomena from a variety of perspectives, ranging from purely syntactic treatments, to accounts as syntax-PF interface or syntax-discourse interface phenomena or as output of base generation.

This book is a collection of articles on the properties of the verb in Turkish as the core element of clause structure, by linguists from different parts of the world. Articles present the most recent analyses on the Turkish language carried out in various theoretical orientations within the functional-formal range. The topics researched in the contributions center around properties of verbal inflection as the morphological means to express temporal, aspectual and modal notions, and the implications of these morphological configurations to syntactic theory.

The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood presents recent research on the nature of language acquisition by typically and atypically developing monolingual and bilingual Turkish-speaking children. The book summarises the most recent research findings on the acquisition of Turkish in childhood, with a focus on (i) the acquisition of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, (ii) the acquisition of discourse skills, (iii) literacy development and (iv) atypical vs. typical development. The book also provides the reader with a unique perspective on cross-learner comparative research on the acquisition of Turkish, demonstrating how similar issues can be investigated in a range of various acquisition contexts. By grouping together the recent research on the acquisition of Turkish within a single volume, this book provides a unique opportunity for readers to review the general developmental tendencies and the most prominent hypotheses put forward by scholars.

This volume brings together a collection of 18 papers dealing with the problem of word order variation in discourse. Word order variation has often been treated as an essentially unpredictable phenomenon, a matter of selecting randomly one of the set of possible orders generated by the grammar. However, as the papers in this collection show, word order variation is not random, but rather governed by principles which can be subjected to scientific investigation and are common to all languages.The papers in this volume discuss word order variation in a diverse collection of languages and from a number of perspectives, including experimental and quantitative text based studies. A number of papers address the problem of deciding which order is 'basic' among the alternatives. The volume will be of interest to typologists, to other linguists interested in problems of word order variation, and to those interested in discourse syntax.

This title considers whether any generalisations can be made about word order in language. The chapters, written by international scholars, draw on data from several 'disharmonic' and typologically distinct languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Basque, French, English, Hixkaryana (a Cariban language), Khalkha Mongolian, Uyghur Turkic, and Afrikaans.

Turkish is a member of the Turkic family of languages, which extends over a vast area in southern and eastern Siberia and adjacent portions of Iran, Afganistan, and China. Turkic, in turn, belongs to the Altaic family of languages. This book deals with the morphological and syntactic, semantic and discourse-based, synchronic and diachronic aspects of the Turkish language. Although an interest in morphosyntactic issues pervades the entire collection, the contributions can be grouped in terms of relative attention to syntax, semantics and discourse, and acquisition.