Structure Course: Turkish

Turkish is one of the few European languages that do not belong to the
Indo-European language family. Together with around 40 closely related
languages like Uigur, Azerbaijani or Tartar, it constitutes the Turkic language
family (sometimes linked to the Mongolian and Tungusic languages in the
hypothetical Altaic family). The mayority of its around 80 million speakers
live in Turkey. However, speakers of Turkish form minorities in many
neighbouring countries and also have migrated to a number of Western countries,
not least to Germany, within the last half century.

We will investigate all areas of Turkish grammar starting with the sound
system, covering derivational and inflectional morphology, the syntax and
lexicon of the language. Turkish is often used as a textbook example of the
agglutinating morphological type, as nominal and verbal stems are often
accompanied by a large number of suffixes each encoding a single grammatical
category. Within these (sometimes very complex) word forms a
morpho-phonolocical assimilation process, referred to as vowel harmony, can be
observed. Another interesting feature is the heavy use of non-finite verb forms
in complex sentences. Furthermore, the so-called Turkish Language Reform is a
prime example of language planning and language politics, which we will also
address in the course.