RESEARCH

At present, I am an affiliate of the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (MultiLing), at the University of Oslo (http://www.hf.uio.no/multiling/english/), where I was a postdoctoral research fellow with a TÜBITAK (2219) grant between May 2014 and August 2015. My postdoctoral project carried out with the supervision of Hanne Gram Simonsen was entitled “Cross-Linguistic Structural Priming of Passives in Norwegian-Turkish and Norwegian-English Bilinguals” (http://www.hf.uio.no/multiling/english/projects/cross-linguistic-structural-priming-of-passives/index.html). During my stay in Oslo, I also carried out a structural priming study with learners of Turkish as a second/foreign language. My manuscript entitled "Structural Priming in L2 Turkish: A Study on Possessive Noun Phrases and Noun Clauses" has recently accepted for publication in an edited volume.

My current research is along two lines: The first one is on “morpho-syntactic acquisition in Norwegian learners of Turkish as a foreign language” in collaboration with Emel Türker-van der Heiden (http://www.hf.uio.no/multiling/english/projects/morphosyntactic-development-of-turkish-as-l2/index.html). The second project is on the creation of “a new word-association test for Turkish” in relation to the MultiLing Dementia project (http://www.hf.uio.no/multiling/english/projects/dementia/index.html).

My PhD project at the Cognitive Science Program in Middle East Technical University (http://ii.metu.edu.tr/cognitive-science-department) consisted of a series of production and comprehension experiments with adult native speakers of Turkish. The title of my dissertation is: "Structural Priming in Turkish Genitive-Possessive Constructions” (https://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614863/index.pdf). My academic advisors were Annette Hohenberger and Deniz Zeyrek.

During my doctoral studies, in academic year 2009-2010, I worked as a visiting researcher at the Polinsky Language Sciences Lab of Harvard University (http://pollab.fas.harvard.edu/), where we conducted structural priming studies with Maria Polinsky with native speakers of English on “concealed questions” to investigate the phrasal vs. clausal distinction.

Before my PhD, I worked on individual differences in language learning. My master’s study, carried out under the supervision of G. Daniel Véronique at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle (http://www.univ-paris3.fr/) was on the role of motivation in learning Turkish as a foreign language. It was entitled “Les Orientations et la Motivation Exécutive dans l’Apprentissage du Turc comme Langue Etrangère ou Seconde” (Orientations and Executive Motivation in Learners of Turkish as a Second or Foreign Language).

I am also interested in early language development, especially in how young infants achieve word segmentation and the subsequent word-object associations. I was also a member of METU Baby Lab, directed by Annette Hohenberger (http://bebem.ii.metu.edu.tr/).

In addition to my research experience, I also worked as an instructor at two different programs representing the two aspects of my research area, namely at the Psychology Department of Bilkent University (http://www.psy.bilkent.edu.tr/?lang=tr) and the English Linguistics Department of Hacettepe University (http://www.idb.hacettepe.edu.tr/En/main.html).