For my dissertation, I work on vowel harmony patterns of non-standard dialects of Turkish, specifically the ones spoken in the North East of Turkey. These dialects are interesting because they display partial vowel harmony. The North East of Turkey is also known to have a rich history and is a home to minority languages such as Greek, Laz and Armenian. For this reason, my dissertation research investigates vowel harmony patterns in the context of historical language contact situation. So far, I worked on data from Trabzon dialect. Currently I focus on Turkish spoken by the Laz community from Rize. While researching this, I also study the attitudes of speakers towards their identity and the language(s) they speak. 

For further information about my research on Laz Turkish, see my publication in Linguistics Vanguard here.  For more information on Trabzon Turkish, see my TU+5 paper or poster. 

My interest in this area started with a fieldwork course, which focused on the underdocumented Kordofanian language Rere (Sudan). My work is on the tone patterns of Rere possessive phrases, which display a complex system with grammatical tone interaction.

This handout contains further information on Rere possessives. 

Empthatic (partial) reduplication of adjectives and adverbs to intensify meaning is another aspect of Turkish I worked on.  This was my master's thesis topic at Syracuse University. 

For more information,  here is my LSA paper or poster!