Güliz Güneş

For my MA, I investigated information structural effects on the utterance intonation patterns in Turkish, with particular attention on sentence topics. The findings revealed that not only the content that is discourse-given, in the common ground and salient, but also contrastive topics and some discourse-new units in an utterance may exhibit deaccentuation (i.e. low levelled flat F0/pitch compression). This is striking, especitally considering that in Intonational languages, e.g. English and German, contrastive topics receive (low) accent. Additionally, although overt subject pronouns are known to mark ‘topic introduction or shift’ in Turkish (Enç 1986), I found that the pronunciation of subject pronouns alone cannot license topic shift in Turkish. In cases of topic shift, discourse-given objects (which otherwise bear nuclear sentential prominence) are found to be deaccented but not deleted. Considering that the ellipsis of discourse-given objects that mark topic shift is banned, I take this as a case in which discourse-givenness leads to deaccentuation, but not necessarily ellipsis in Turkish.

As a continuation to the investigation of the correlation between information structure and prosody, in two papers, I show that topic and foci have no unique prosodic correlate / accentual signature in Turkish. In fact, the shape of the prosodic template within declaratives is oblivious to information structure. Based on this, I propose that, from a prosodic typological perspective, Turkish is a ‘Phrase Language’.

On another work, in collaboration with Nicole Dehé, I investigate whether ellipsis is an instance of radical deaccentuation in Icelandic. Considering that the discourse anaphoric part of the elliptical utterances are given in the previous discourse, they are often deaccented in the non-elliptical counterparts of such utterances in Intonation Languages. This observation lead some scholars to conclude that ellipsis is a form of Radical Deaccentuation of given material. This idea is based on the prosodic behaviour of givenness in Intonation Languages such as English and German. Icelandic, being another Intonation Language, poses a challenge to this conclusion because it is claimed not to deaccent discourse given material, yet it allows clausal ellipsis. In a production experiment, we have tested whether the given parts of utterances that usually get ellided bear any accentuation or not when they are fully pronounced. Our results show that, even if the given parts of utterances are indeed accented, their overall pitch register is much lower when compared to non-given contexts. We interpret this as a form of marking givenness via prosody. This result weakens the stronger claim of Radical Deaccentuation accounts, and lead us to make a more general statement, which involves other prosodic cues and not simply lack of accentuation.

Güneş, G. 2010. The pragmatic and prosodic analysis of sentence topics in Turkish: An investigation based on real-life conversations. MA thesis, Boğaziçi University. [please contact me for a copy]

Güneş, G. 2013. Limits of Prosody in Turkish. In the Journal of Linguistic Research (D.A.D.), special issue "Updates in Turkish Phonology" E. Erguvanlı Taylan (ed.), Boğaziçi University Press, Istanbul.

Güneş, G. 2013. On the Role of Prosodic Constituency in Turkish. In U. Özge (ed.), The Proceedings of WAFL8, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, Cambridge, MA.

Güneş, G. & N. Dehé. 2022. Phonetic correlates of deaccentuation in Icelandic and its relation to givenness. Ms., Tübingen University.

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Güneş, G. 2010. Prosodic Analysis of Sentence Topics in Turkish. International LoT Conference, University of Cyprus, Nicosia-Cyprus, March.

Güneş, G. 2011. Pragmatic and Prosodic Analysis of Sentence Topics in Turkish. CLCG Syntax Meetings, Groningen-The Netherlands, March.

Güneş, G. 2011. The Use of Topics: Null-Objects and Null-Subjects in Turkish. Poster. 4th Conference on Syntax, Phonology and Language Analysis, Budapest-Hungary, September.

Güneş, G. 2012. Information Structure, Prosodic Domains and Parenthesis. (Mis)matches in clause linkage, Berlin-Germany, April.

Güneş, G. 2018. Syntax versus information structure: the prosodic landscape of Turkish clauses. Research Seminar. University of Geneva – Switzerland, October.

Güneş, G. & N. Dehé. 2022. Don’t deaccent Given: A challenge to Radical Deaccentuation accounts from Icelandic. Paper to be presented at the WS 5: Experimental and Corpus-Based Approaches to Ellipsis, 55th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea 24–27 August 2022 University of Bucharest.

During my PhD, I investigated the prosody of a variety of clausal and phrasal parentheticals (comment clauses, appositives, vocatives, interruptions, etc.). Upon a comparison of each parenthetical type to non-parenthetical phrases and clauses, I show that the prosodic isolation of a parenthetical is directly related to whether or not it is used as a speech act, rather than whether or not it is underlyingly clausal. As part of this research theme, I also discovered and described the prosodic properties of different speech acts in Turkish. I have a number of publications on this topic, including my doctoral dissertation.

Güneş, G. 2015. Deriving prosodic structures. Doctoral dissertation, University of Groningen. Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series, no.397.

Güneş, G. & Ç. Çöltekin. 2015. Mapping to prosody: not all parentheticals are alike. In S. Schneider, J. Glikman & M. Avanzi (eds.), Parenthetical Verbs. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Güneş, G. 2014. Constraints on Syntax-Prosody Correspondence: The Case of Clausal and Sub-clausal Parentheticals in Turkish. Lingua 150, 278-314.

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Güneş, G. 2013. Prosody of Finite and Non-finite Clausal Parentheticals in Turkish. The Parenthesis and Ellipsis Workshop of the 34th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Linguistics. Potsdam-Germany, March.

Güneş, G. 2012. Parenthetical insertions and Prosodic hierarchy in Turkish. 8th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics, Stuttgart-Germany, May.

Güneş, G. 2012. Information Structure, Prosodic Domains and Parenthesis. (Mis)matches in clause linkage, Berlin-Germany, April.

Ellipsis is a phenomena where the information structure, syntax and prosody meets. Such constructions heavily depend on discourse level inter-utterance dependencies, as well as syntactic and prosodic well-formedness. During my post-doctoral years in Leiden, I investigated if and how prosody mediates the well-formedness of utterances with ellipsis. During this inquiry, I had a chance to expand the language inventory of my research and investigated English, Hungarian, Dutch and Icelandic, as well as Turkish. My focus was primarily on the prosodic and morphosyntactic phenomena that surrounds clausal ellipsis.

In collaboration with Nicole Dehé, I investigate whether ellipsis is an instance of radical deaccentuation in Icelandic. Considering that the discourse anaphoric part of the elliptical utterances are given in the previous discourse, they are often deaccented in the non-elliptical counterparts of such utterances in Intonation Languages. In a production experiment, we have tested whether the given parts of utterances that usually get elided bear any accentuation or not when they are fully pronounced. Our results show that, even if the given parts of utterances are indeed accented, their overall pitch register is much lower when compared to non-given contexts.

My work (with James Griffiths and Anikó Lipták) on clarification requests in English and Hungarian (in the form of echo questions) involved elliptical echo questions (echo/reprise fragments). We show that echo fragments do not involve metalinguistic conjunction, that they are formed via syntax (just as their non-echo counterparts), and that echo vs. standard fragments exhibit different syntactic locality constraints in Hungarian and English. To account for these differing locality constraints, we offer and then defend a theory in which ellipsis is licensed by a syntactically derived question under discussion (QUD) in the sense of Griffiths (2019).

In another collaboration with Anikó Lipták, I have investigated whether the unacceptable use of aggressively discourse linked wh-phrases (e.g. what the hell) in sluicing is sourced from a prosodic issue in English. Ruling out possible syntactic, semantic or extant prosodic accounts, and based on our acceptability judgment and production experiment results, we provided a novel prosodic account in which we claimed that the strict prosodic requirement in the realisation of the tune of such formulaic expressions clashes with the syntax-based prosodic prominence location in sluicing. The clash of sentence level prosodic organisation, and the prosodic of wh-the-hell creates unacceptability. We provided crosslinguistic support for our observation from Dutch and Hungarian, in similar cases of language use.

With James Griffiths, Anikó Lipták and Jason Merchant, I presented an explanation for why R-pronouns in Dutch cannot strand a preposition under clausal ellipsis whereas they can in non-elliptical environments. Based on the results of acceptability judgment experiments, we conclude that the source of the ungrammaticality of prepositionless R-pronouns in sluicing is syntactic, in which the otherwise available EPP-driven movement of the P in R-pronominal contexts is bled due to ellipsis, and hence prevents the successful derivation of a preposition stranding R-pronoun configuration.

Güneş, G. & N. Dehé. 2022. Phonetic correlates of deaccentuation in Icelandic and its relation to givenness. Ms., Tübingen University.

Griffiths, J, G. Güneş & A. Lipták. 2022. Phonetic properties of the prosody of echo questions in English and Hungarian. Ms., Leiden University.

Lipták, A. & G. Güneş. 2022. The derivational timing of ellipsis: An overview of theoretical approaches. In The derivational timing of Ellipsis, Güliz Güneş & Anikó Lipták (eds.), Oxford University Press.

Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2022. The Derivational Timing of Ellipsis. Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics, Oxford University Press.

Griffiths, J., G. Güneş, J. Merchant & Lipták, A. 2021. Dutch P-stranding and ellipsis: Merchant’s wrinkle ironed out. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics.

Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2021 . Nuclear prominence in ellipsis: evidence from aggressively non-D-linked phrases in British English. The Journal of Linguistics.

Griffiths, J, G. Güneş & A. Lipták. 2021. Reprise fragments in English and Hungarian: Further support for an in-situ Q-equivalence approach to clausal ellipsis. Under review for Language.

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Güneş, G. & N. Dehé. 2022. Don’t deaccent Given: A challenge to Radical Deaccentuation accounts from Icelandic. Paper to be presented at the WS 5: Experimental and Corpus-Based Approaches to Ellipsis, 55th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea 24–27 August 2022 University of Bucharest.

Griffiths, J., G. Güneş, J. Merchant & Lipták, A. 2021. P-stranding out of Place: The bleeding effect of ellipsis on Dutch P-stranding. Paper presented at the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 39. Arizona/online, April.

Griffiths, J, G. Güneş & A. Lipták. 2020. Focus and quotation in English echo questions. DGFS 2020 – WS 12: Expressing the use-mention-distinction: An empirical perspective. Hamburg University – Germany, March.

Griffiths, J, Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2017. Echo fragments. Workshop 6 (Approaches to Fragments and ellipsis in spoken and written English) of the 7th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English . Vigo, 09/17.

Griffiths, J, Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2018. A Minimalist approach to Reprise Fragments. The annual meeting of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft. Stuttgart, 03/18.

Griffiths, J, Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2018. English reprise Fragments in Minimalism: an in-situ analysis. Generative Linguistics in the Old World, GLOW41. Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Hungary, April. [poster]

Güneş, G., A. Lipták & J. Merchant. 2018. Dutch sluicing and P-stranding. Grote Taaldag 2018. Utrecht – NL, February.

Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2016. The role of prosody sensitive particles in licensing ellipsis. 4th Conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English. Poznań - Poland, September.

Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2016. Licensing the hell in ellipsis: A prosodic accident. Ellipsis Across Borders 2016. Sarajevo - Bosnia and Herzegovina, June.

In the first part of my PhD thesis I have provided a detailed grammar of Turkish prosodic structures, and related this grammar to the syntactic properties of utterances. Being aware of the architectural issues surrounding contemporary formal linguistics, I have taken steps to better integrate extant formal prosodic research couched in Prosodic Structure Theory (in particular Match Theory) within the Minimalist Program (MP) and Distributed Morphology (DM) frameworks. In this work, I developed a novel derivational model of how prosodic constituents are built which utilizes a rule-based system of prosody, and hence abandons representational models like OT. I demonstrated that this model not only confers conceptual parsimony that accords with the assumptions of DM, but also straightforwardly explains the patterns of prosodic-constituency formation in Turkish (which I claim is a prosodically a non-recursive language) and Tagalog (which I claim is prosodically a recursive language).

I have published a number of reference articles that describe the prosodic grammar of Turkish, and its relation to Turkish syntax.

I have also produced work on the prosodic properties of compounds, and some other syntax-related topics such as whether prosodic constituency is dependent on syntactic phases in Turkish.

Güneş, G. & Ç. Çöltekin. 2022. Acoustic correlates of compounds and phrases in Turkish. Ms., Tübingen University.

Güneş, G. to appear. Generative grammar approaches to Turkish: Word order-prosody interface. In L. Johanson (ed.), Encyclopedia of Turkic Languages and Linguistics. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV.

Güneş, G. 2022. Variable prosodic domains and violations of PIC. Ms., Tübingen University. To be submitted to Languages.

Güneş, G. 2015. Deriving prosodic structures. Doctoral dissertation, University of Groningen. Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series, no.397.

Güneş, G. 2020. Türkçede bürün ve sözdizim arakesiti [Syntax and Prosody Interface in Turkish] In I. P. Uzun (ed.), Kuramsal ve uygulamalı sesbilim [Theoretical and Applied Phonology]. 157-195: Ankara: Seçkin Yayıncılık.

Güneş, G. 2020. Prosodic systems: Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran and Central Asia. In C. Gussenhoven & A.Chen (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Prosody. Oxford: OUP. With Anastasia Karlsson.

Güneş, G. 2009. On the Formation of [V+V] Compounds in Turkish: a prosodic account. Boğaziçi University.

As part of a collaborative enterprise between James Griffiths' project Fragments of discourse and my postdoctoral project Ellipsis licensing beyond syntax (hosted at U Leiden), James Griffiths, Anikó Lipták, and I have conducted the first cross-linguistic Minimalist investigation of reprise fragments (echo questions as fragmentary responses). We show that the properties exhibited by reprise fragments can only be modelled under an 'in-situ' approach to clausal ellipsis. To account for the differing locality constraints on reprise fragments observed across languages, we offer and then defend a theory in which ellipsis is licensed by a syntactically derived question under discussion (QUD) in the sense of Griffiths (2019).

Griffiths, J, G. Güneş & A. Lipták. 2022. Phonetic properties of the prosody of echo questions in English and Hungarian. Ms., Leiden University.

Griffiths, J, G. Güneş & A. Lipták. 2022/accepted. Reprise fragments in English and Hungarian: Further support for an in-situ Q-equivalence approach to clausal ellipsis. Language.

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Griffiths, J, G. Güneş & A. Lipták. 2020. Focus and quotation in English echo questions. DGFS 2020 – WS 12: Expressing the use-mention-distinction: An empirical perspective. Hamburg University – Germany, March.

Griffiths, J, Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2017. Echo fragments. Workshop 6 (Approaches to Fragments and ellipsis in spoken and written English) of the 7th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English . Vigo, 09/17.

Griffiths, J, Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2018. A Minimalist approach to Reprise Fragments. The annual meeting of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft. Stuttgart, 03/18.

Griffiths, J, Güneş, G. & A. Lipták. 2018. English reprise Fragments in Minimalism: an in-situ analysis” Generative Linguistics in the Old World, GLOW41. Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Hungary, April. [poster]

My work on the prosodic and morphosyntactic behaviour of the Subject agreement markers in verbs as fragment answers in Turkish has shown that morphosyntactic words may contain more than one prosodic word under certain morphosyntactic environments. My analysis employed the tools of DM such as lowering, timing of merger and the postsyntactic attachment of dissociated morphemes such as agreement. In a paper presented at “The Word and the Morpheme” workshop in Berlin, 2016, Aslı Göksel and I discussed the architectural consequences of the analysis we suggest, which concludes that cyclic phonological constituency formation models are not attainable, and unlike syntax, phonological constituents are derived in a non-cyclical/top-down manner. I have published the findings of this research in Syntax.

I have also provided a morphotactic analysis of agreement doubling on the verbal domain in Turkish. This work is published in an edited volume.

Güneş, G. 2021. Morphosyntax and Phonology of Agreement in Turkish. Syntax, 24: 143-190.

Güneş, G. 2020. Variability in the realization of agreement in Turkish: A morphotactic account. In A. Gürer et al. (eds.), Morphological complexity within and across boundaries, 236-261. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Güneş, G. 2022. Prosodic evidence for optionally resizing M-words via Lowering. Poster to be presented at GLOW45. Queen Mary University of London on 27th-29th April.

Güneş, G. & A. Göksel. 2016. M-word vs. ω-word: Top down prosody vs. bottom up syntax. The Word and the Morpheme. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin - Germany, September.

Güneş, G. & A. Göksel. 2013. Morphoprosodic delimitation of the focus domain in the WORD: In the footsteps of Sebüktekin (1984). LINGDAY 2013: 45 years of Linguistics at Boğaziçi University in honour of Prof. Dr. Hikmet Sebüktekin. Istanbul-Turkey, June.

In collaborative work with James Griffiths, I provide syntactic, pragmatic, and prosodic evidence to show that certain apparent cases of subordination (ki Clauses) in Turkish are actually cases of paratactic coordination or adjunction.

(i) Adem san-ıyor ki Havva elma-yı ye-di

Adem believe-PROG ki Havva apple-ACC eat-PST

"Adem believes that Havva ate the apple."

(ii) Ali Bey, ki evil bir adam-dır, Mine-yi taciz et-ti.

Ali Mr. ki married a man-COP Mine-ACC harassment make-PST

"Mr. Ali, who is a married man, harrassed Mine."

The results of a thorough syntactic and prosodic examination revealed that the assumptions of the traditional literature are false, and that ki is used in Turkish as a marker of parenthetical adjunction or coordination. This conclusion provides cross-linguistic support for idea that appositive/parenthetical elements fall into two superordinate natural classes — those that are adjoined to their hosts, and those that are coordinated with them (see Griffiths 2015c and here for more on this division).

Griffiths, J. & G. Güneş. 2014. Ki issues in Turkish: Parenthetical coordination and adjunction. In M. E. Kluck, D. Ott & M. de Vries (eds.), Parenthesis and Ellipsis: Cross-Linguistic and Theoretical Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 173-217.

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Griffiths, J. & G. Güneş. 2018. An Indo-European Complementiser in Turkish: Against the subordination analysis. Clause Typing and the Syntax-to-Discourse Relation in Head-Final Languages. University of Konstanz – Germany, May.

Griffiths, J. & G. Güneş. 2013. Notes on ki. Paper presented at the S-Circle's Parentheticals workshop. Santa Cruz, April.