Cover not available

Article published In: Reflections on Constructions across Grammars
Edited by Martin Hilpert and Jan-Ola Östman
[Constructions and Frames 6:2] 2014
► pp. 143–169

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

On the borrowability of subject pronoun constructions in Turkish–Dutch contact

 | Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies
Published online: 30 March 2015
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.6.2.02dog
Turkish spoken in the Netherlands (NL-Turkish) sounds different in comparison to Turkish spoken in Turkey (TR-Turkish) due to Dutch influence. In addition to borrowed Dutch words/phrases, Dutch influence on NL-Turkish is also observed through literally translated constructions. This study investigates the Dutch influence on NL-Turkish constructions with subject pronouns. Analyses of NL-Turkish and TR-Turkish spoken corpora do not reveal any significant differences in terms of subject pronoun frequency. However, qualitative analysis of the data reveals some unconventional cases of subject pronoun use in NL-Turkish. In these cases, subject pronouns do not lead to unconventionality on their own but as parts of larger constructions that are copied from Dutch as chunks. Following the principles of usage-based approaches, these unconventional constructions are further analyzed in terms of their level of schematicity and flexibility.
References (69)
Aarsen, J. (1994). Relating two events in two languages: Acquisition of cohesive devices by Turkish-Dutch bilingual children at school age, Ph.D. thesis. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, A.Y., & Dixon, R.M.W. (2001). Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance: Problems in comparative linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Akıncı, M.A., & Backus, A. (2005). The structure and the role of code-switching in Turkish-French conversations. In J.N. Jorgensen, S. Talayman & C. Dabelsteen (Eds.), Languaging and language practices (pp. 156–166). Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Backus, A. (2004). Convergence as a mechanism of language change. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 71, 179–181. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2005). Codeswitching and language change: One thing leads to another? International Journal of Bilingualism, 91, 307–340. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolonyai, A. 2000. Elective affinities: Language contact in the abstract lexicon and its structural consequences. International Journal of Bilingualism, 41, 81–106. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boeschoten, H.E. (1994). Second language influence on first language acquisition: Turkish children in Germany. In G. Extra & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), The cross-linguistic study of bilingual development (pp. 253–263). Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bullock, B., & Toribio, A.J. (2004). Introduction: Convergence as an emergent property in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 81, 303–320. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, J. (2006). From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language, 821, 711–733. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, J.L., & Beckner, C. (2010). Usage-based theory. In B. Heine & H. Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 827–856). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Campbell, L. (1993). On proposed universals of grammatical borrowing. In H. Aartsen & R.J. Jeffers (Eds.), Historical linguistics 1989: Papers from the 9th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (pp. 91–109). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
CBS. (2011). Central Bureau voor Statistiek. [URL]
Croft, W. (2000). Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. Harlow (Essex): Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2001). Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2006). The relevance of an evolutionary model to historical linguistics. In O. Nedergaard Thomsen (Ed.), Competing models of linguistic change: Evolution and beyond (pp. 91–133). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, W., & Cruse, A. (2004). Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davidson, B. (1996). ‘Pragmatic weight’ and Spanish subject pronouns: The pragmatic and discourse uses of ‘tu’ and ‘yo’ in spoken Madrid Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 261, 543–565. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Doğruöz, A.S. (2007). Synchronic variation and diachronic change in Dutch Turkish: A corpus based analysis, Ph.D. Thesis. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Doğruöz, A.S., & Backus, A. (2007). Postverbal elements in immigrant Turkish: Evidence of Change? International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(2), 185–220. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2009). Innovative constructions in Dutch Turkish: An assessment of on-going contact induced change. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(1), 41–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enç, M. (1986). Topic switching and pronominal subjects in Turkish. In D.I. Slobin & K. Zimmer (Eds.), Studies in Turkish linguistics (pp. 195–209). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Erguvanlı-Taylan, E. (1979). The function of word order in Turkish grammar, Ph.D. Thesis, UCLA.
Erman, B., & Warren, B. (2000). The idiom principle and the open choice principle. Text, 20(1), 29–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, N., & Levinson, S. (2009). The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 321, 429–492. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flores-Ferrán, N. (2004). Spanish subject personal pronoun use in New York City Puerto Ricans: Can we rest the case of English contact? Language Variation and Change, 161, 49–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fried, M., & Östman, J-O. (2004). Construction Grammar: A thumbnail sketch. In M. Fried & J.-O. Östman (Eds.), Construction Grammar in a cross-language perspective (pp. 11–87). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Geeraerts, D., Kristiansen, G., & Peirsman, Y. (2010). Introduction. In D. Geeraerts, G. Kristiansen & Y. Peirsman (Eds.), Advances in cognitive sociolinguistics (pp. 1–19). Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions. A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: The Chicago University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2006). Constructions at work: The nature of generalizations in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Göksel, A., & Özsoy, A.S. (2003). dA: A focus/topic associated clitic in Turkish. Lingua, 1131, 1143–1167. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gürel, A. (2006). L2 acquisition of pragmatic and syntactic constraints in the use of overt and null subject pronouns. In R. Slabakova, S.A. Montrul & P. Prevost (Eds.), Inquiries in linguistic development: In honor of Lydia White (pp. 259–282). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2005). Language contact and grammatical change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hulk, A., & Müller, N. (2000). Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 31, 227–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johanson, L. (2000). Turkic indirectives. In L. Johanson & B. Utas (Eds.), Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and neighbouring languages (pp. 61–89). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kay, P., & Michaelis, L.A. (2012). Constructional meaning and compositionality. In C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger & P. Portner (Eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning, Vol. 31. (pp. 2271–2296). Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kerslake, C. (1987). Noun phrase deletion and pronominalization in Turkish. In H.E. Boeschoten & L.T. Verhoeven (Eds.), Studies on modern Turkish: Proceedings of Third Conference on Turkish Linguistics (pp. 91–103). Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kristiansen, G., & Dirven, R. (2008). Introduction. Cognitive sociolinguistics: Rationale, methods and scope. In G. Kristiansen & R. Dirven (Eds.), Cognitive sociolinguistics: Language variation, cultural models, social systems (pp. 1–21). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lambrecht, K. (1994). Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus and mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langacker, R.W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Volume I: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lapidus, N., & Otheguy, R. (2005). Contact induced change? Overt nonspecific Ellos in Spanish in New York. In L. Sayahi & M. Westmoreland (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (pp. 67–75). Somerville (MA): Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leino, J., & Östman, J-O. (2005). Constructions and variability. In M. Fried & H.C. Boas (Eds.), Grammatical constructions: Back to the roots (pp. 191–212). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Manetta, E. (2007). Unexpected left dislocation: An English corpus study. Journal of Pragmatics, 391, 1029–1035. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Milroy, J. (2003). On the role of speaker in language change. In R. Hickey (Ed.), Motives for language change (pp. 143–157). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (2004). Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(2), 125–142. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oliveira, M. (2000). The pronominal subject in Italian and Brazilian Portugese. In M.A. Kato & E.V. Negrão (Eds.), Brazilian Portugese and the null subject parameter (pp. 37–53). Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag,Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ono, T., & Thompson, S.A. (2003). Japanese (w)atashi/ore/boku ‘I’: They’re not just pronouns. Cognitive Linguistics, 141, 321–347. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özcan, F.H, Keçik, I., Topbaş, S., & Konrot, A. (2000). A comparative study in pronominal use in the discourse of monolingual Turkish speaking and bilingual Turkish-Danish speaking children. In A. Holmen & J.N. Jorgensen (Eds.), Det er conversation 801 değil mi? Perspectives on the bilingualism of Turkish speaking children and adolescents in North Western Europe (pp. 101–121). Copenhagen: Denmarks Larerhojskoles Reproduktionafdeling.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özsoy, A.S. (1987). The null subject parameter and Turkish. In Hendrik E. Boeschoten & Ludo T. Verhoeven (Eds.), Studies on modern Turkish: Proceedings of The Third Conference on Turkish linguistics (pp. 82–90). Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Öztürk, B. (2002). Turkish as a non-pro-drop language. In E. Erguvanli-Taylan (Ed.), The verb in Turkish (pp. 239–259). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paradis, J., & Navarro, S. (2003). Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: What is the role of input? Journal of Child Language, 301, 371–393. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pfaff, C.W. (1992). Turkish in contact with German: Language maintenance and loss among immigrant children in West Berlin. International Journal of Sociology of Language, 901, 97–129.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pease-Alvarez, L., Hakuta, K., & Bayley, R. (1996). Spanish proficiency and language use in a California Mexico community. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 15(1/2), 137–151.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Polinsky, M. (1995). Cross-linguistic parallels in language loss. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 14(1/2), 87–123.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rehbein, J. (2001). Turkish in European societies. Lingua E Stile, XXXVI1, 317–334.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rothman, J. (2009). Pragmatic deficits with syntactic consequences ? L2 pronominal subjects and syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics, 411, 951–973. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rostila, J. (2006). Storage as a way to grammaticalization. Constructions, 11, 1–59.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanchez, L. (2004). Functional convergence in the tense, evidentiality and aspectual systems of Quechua Spanish bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 71, 147–162. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schaufeli, A. (1991). Turkish in an immigrant setting: A comparative study of the first language of monolingual and bilingual Turkish children, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Amsterdam.
Schmitt, E. (2000). Overt and covert codeswitching in immigrant children from Russia. International Journal of Bilingualism, 41, 9–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339–368. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomason, S.G., & Kaufman, T. (1988). Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomason, S.G. (2001). Language contact: An introduction. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Toribio, A.J. (2004). Convergence of as an optimizing strategy in bilingual speech: Evidence from code-switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 71, 165–173. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tsimpli, I.M., Sorace, A., Heycock, C., & Filiaci, F. (2004). First language attrition and syntactic subjects: A study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8(3), 257–277. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Turan, Ü. D. (1996). Null versus overt subjects in Turkish discourse: A centering analysis, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pennsylvania.
Weinreich, U. (1953). Languages in contact: Findings and problems. The Hague: Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yağmur, K., & van de Vijver, F. (2012). Acculturation and language orientations of Turkish immigrants in Australia, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 43(7), 1–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Barking, Marie
2024. Language learners, chess champions, and piano prodigies – insights from research on language contact and expert behavior. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 12:1 ► pp. 259 ff. DOI logo
Barking, Marie, Ad Backus & Maria Mos
2022. Individual corpus data predict variation in judgments: testing the usage-based nature of mental representations in a language transfer setting. Cognitive Linguistics 33:3 ► pp. 481 ff. DOI logo
Rottet, Kevin J.
2021. Making one’s way in Welsh. In Constructions in Contact 2 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 30], ► pp. 233 ff. DOI logo
Höder, Steffen
2018. Grammar is community-specific. In Constructions in Contact [Constructional Approaches to Language, 24], ► pp. 37 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue