Dilbilimi
Permanent URI for this community
Browse
Browsing Dilbilimi by Author "Atlamaz, Ümit."
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item De Re De dicto ambiguities in Turkish : disambiguation by LLMs and processing by humans(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Marşan, Büşra.; Atlamaz, Ümit.; Demirok, Ömer Faruk.This study aims to investigate De Re De Dicto ambiguities in Turkish from different points of views: Formal semantics, computational linguistics and psycholinguistics. From the formal semantics perspective, a survey of different accounts that aim to explain compositional semantics of De Re De Dicto ambiguities is provided. With free word order and optionally non-overt accusative marker interacting with information structure, Turkish poses an interesting case for De Re De Dicto ambiguities as their resolution is closely tied to many factors: Discourse and non-discourse elements in the conversational context, information structure, world knowledge, and belief states of the utterer. From the computational linguistics perspective, a challenge data set in Turkish for natural language inference (NLI) is offered to test swiftly growing large language models’ (LLMs) abilities in recognizing syntactic and morphological cues along with the world knowledge. For this purpose, a seed data of 743 sentence triplets were manually created and annotated by native speakers: One potentially De Re De Dicto ambiguous sentence, one De Re paraphrase and one De Dicto paraphrase. Then this seed data was augmented using a natural language augmentation algorithm specifically created for this task. An experiment was conducted to assess probing abilities of CNLI-TR and compare it with NLI-TR, the only other available NLI data set for Turkish. From the psycholinguistics perspective, a self-paced reading experiment was conducted to investigate whether theoretical claims that De Re is "harder" to compositionally derive hold from a sentence processing perspective. Following disambiguating contexts, participants were shown De Re De Dicto ambiguous sentences and were asked comprehension questions targeting specific readings parallel to disambiguating contexts. Reading time of De Re De Dicto ambiguous sentences and response time of comprehension questions were compared across disambiguating contexts to explore whether there was a significant and credible processing difference.Item Ergative as accusative case: evidence from Adıyaman Kurmanji(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2012., 2012.) Atlamaz, Ümit.; Öztürk, Balkız.This study aims to investigate the nature of ergativity in Adıyaman Kurmanji within the premises of the Minimalist Program. Adıyaman Kurmanji displays two alignment patterns depending on the tense. In non-past structures nominative alignment is observed whereas the past tense requires an ergative alignment. Based on these two types of alignments many linguists like Haig (2004), Thackston (2006), and Gündoğdu (2011) argue that Kurmanji is a split ergative language. Accordingly, the major aim of this study is to investigate the structure of the ergative pattern in Adıyaman Kurmanji. In this study, the initial step was to compare the ergative and nominative subjects in terms of certain tests like binding, scope and EPP to determine the phrase structure and where the subjects reside on the structure. Additionally, voice properties of the language were inspected as a background to the major claim. Based on the results of the tests applied and the motivation obtained from the data, it was argued that what has been called ergative in Adıyaman Kurmanji is, indeed, a passive structure diachronically reanalyzed as the past tense. According to Trask’s (1979) typology of ergative languages, there are two types of ergative languages, which labels as Type A and Type B. Based on this typology, we argue that Adıyaman Kurmanji falls into Type A where ergativity is the result of passive structure becoming obligatory diachronically. In order to incorporate our analysis into the Minimalist Program we adopt Collins’ (2005) analysis of passives in English. Additionally, we argue that perfects in Adıyaman Kurmanji have a bi-clausal structure and display ergativity only because they accommodate a past tense CP. In addition to ergativity in Adıyaman Kurmanji, we investigated unbalanced coordination, which occurs as a by-product of ergativity in this language. We argue that unbalanced coordination takes place as coordination of two VPs. Moreover, coordination has a hierarchical structure rather than a flat one.Item Genitive case in Turkish(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Kuzgun, Aslı.; Atlamaz, Ümit.This thesis explores the syntactic contexts with a genitive case in Turkish. The genitive case in Turkish occurs with the pronominal complements of a set of postpositions, on possessors and the subjects of embedded clauses. The genitive case with postpositions differs from the genitive case in other positions and is identified as a lexical case due to being idiosyncratic. The distinctive allomorphy patterns of the lexical genitive case presented in this thesis point to a further division between the two contexts. Considering the syntactic and behavioral differences between the lexical and the structural genitive case, it is claimed that the genitive case with postpositions is a different case from the genitive case in other positions. The genitive case on possessors and the subjects of embedded clauses are analyzed as an unmarked case in Turkish. It is argued that the structural genitive case can only occur at Spec, DP. Following this argument, the subject case alternation in the embedded clauses is discussed. It is observed that the embedded clauses occur with nominative subjects when they combine with certain postpositions. Building on this observation, it is suggested that the embedded clauses are headed by Ds, which differ in their phrasal properties, and that the postpositions select the type of D they combine with. Overall, this thesis defines two kinds of genitive cases in Turkish and discusses the morphosyntactic conditions for realizing each.Item Semantics and syntax of Herhangi bir :|an alternative-based approach to Turkish polarity items(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Aslan Kubilay, Pınar.; Atlamaz, Ümit.The aim of this study is two-fold. First, I present a description of the complex behavior of the Turkish polarity sensitive item herhangi bir. Then, based on the picture that emerged, I provide a unified analysis that accounts for the semantic and syntactic properties that connects herhangi bir with both free choice items and negative polarity items. I adopt an alternative-based framework that has been proposed by Chierchia (2013), who links polarity sensitivity to obligatorily active alternatives. Within this framework, all NPIs and FCIs are analyzed with respect to the same alternative set, and parametric variation is handled with simple switches to the basic elements of the framework, such as the position of the modal, the mode of exhaustification, the subset of alternatives that needs to be exhaustified. The analysis indicates that associating restricted distribution of herhangi bir to obligatorily activated alternatives that require either a downward entailing context or a modal context to be exhaustified consistently can explain the dual nature of herhangi bir and its tie with other polarity sensitive items such as the pure NPI hiç ‘at all’ and pure FCI herhangi n.Item Turkish as a heritage language : diachronic change and synchronic variation of Turkish in the United Kingdom(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Sanıyar, Ezgi.; Bağrıaçık, Metin.; Atlamaz, Ümit.In this study, I investigate certain morpho-syntactic changes emerging in Turkish spoken as a heritage language in the United Kingdom. I mainly focus on object pronoun use and the use of the plural marker -lAr both on verbs and nouns in this variety, based on data collected from members of the Turkish community in the United Kingdom. First, I show that Turkish heritage speakers tend not to omit direct objects even in environments in which they are judged redundant or optional by the baseline speakers, native speakers of Turkish in Turkey. Second, I reveal that heritage speakers of Turkish prefer plural marking on nouns even when the latter are modified by quantifiers and numerals - configurations that are judged in the literature as ungrammatical in Standard Modern Turkish. Third, I present that the same speakers use -lAr as third person plural marker in their natural speech more than the baseline speakers, overriding certain strong tendencies in Standard Modern Turkish, such as a tendency to omit -lAr when the controller is a nonhuman or inanimate plural subject. I claim that these differences cannot be wholesale attributed to one or the other mechanisms of change. Instead, I argue that there are different motivating factors for these changes, which are mainly the dominant language transfer effect, silence and distance problems in binding, complex structure avoidance, and the tendency to adopt a more regularized and analytic structure.