Is There Something Wrong With Turkish In The Netherlands?

A case study on unconventional constructions

A. Seza Doğruöz | Faculteit Cultuur en Communicatie, Tilburg University

Turkish spoken in the Netherlands (NL-Turkish) is described as "idiosyncratic", "different" or simply "wrong" by monolingual Turkish speakers in Turkey (TR-Turkish). It is a well-known fact that languages in contact affect each other in various ways (Thomason, 2001). As a result of contact, changes may occur in the linguistic systems of the contact languages. According to Owens (1996), these changes start with the borrowing of multi word unit (construction) structures from the contact language or languages. Based on this observation, this study explores the question if the borrowed structures of Dutch constructions cause NL-Turkish to be identified as unconventional by TR-Turkish speakers. As a case study, unconventional non-finite constructions are analyzed. The results of the analyses reveal structural copying of Dutch constructions in several ways, which causes unconventionality in NL-Turkish.

Published online: 24 March 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/ttwia.74.18dog