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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

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

| Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies

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.

Keywords: language change, usage-based approaches, constructions, Dutch, subject pronouns, Turkish
Published online: 30 March 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.6.2.02dog
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