Onur Özsoy

linguist / educator

Click here for my CV

My research focuses on heritage languages, multilingualism, language acquisition, and various experimental methods. Also, check out my academic website here. My main interests, broadly, are psycholinguistics, language acquisition, and multilingualism (especially in heritage languages). Within these, I focus different linguistic levels from smaller phonological units to larger ones like narrative discourse structure. Additionally, I work on projects about the replication crisis in linguistics and the metascience of bilingualism research. Currently, I work as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Natalia Gagarina at the BMBF-funded project SPEAK (Diagnosis of language abilities in multilingual children: Validation of a test battery, project website) and I am also a junior fellow with Prof. Jacopo Torregrossa at the Collaborative Research Center 1252 on "Prominence in Language" at the University of Cologne (website).

I am also on Twitter / X and the OSF. And here's my Google Scholar site.

What’s new?

From 21-25 October 2024, I will teach an introductory statistics course at the University of Crete. The course is titled OLIVE-R (Open Linguistic Investigation and Variable Exploration with R)!

On 14 November 2024, I will defend my dissertation titled "Exploring morphosyntactic production and comprehension in Turkish heritage speakers" (Examinors: Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Artemis Alexiadou, Prof. Dr. Natalia Gagarina, Prof. Dr. Albert Backus) at Humboldt University! Contact me for more information.

Frederic Blum, Ivona Ilić and I did a podcast (called InterFacing Language) about syntax, semantics and other linguistic topics. Each episode, we interview a different linguist about their research and why it matters. Listen to all episodes of InterFacing Language here. I've also been interviewed by a podcast of the Leibniz-association's "Date a Scientist" and spoke about multilingual and second language acquisition there. Check it out here. Stay tuned.

Publications

Martynova, M., Özsoy, O., Rizou, V., Szucsich, L., Gagarina, N., & Alexiadou, A. (2024). Demonstratives in heritage Greek, Russian, and Turkish in Germany and the United States. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13670069241261052. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069241261052

Mattiauda, E., Özsoy, O., Gagarina, N., & Perovic, A. (2024). Inferential abilities in Down syndrome: Examining verbal and nonverbal contributors to narrative comprehension in adolescents and adults. Proceedings of CogSci 2024. Proceedings of CogSci 2024.

Rizou, V., Martynova, M., Özsoy, O., Szucsich, L., Alexiadou, A., & Gagarina, N. (2024). Grammatical aspect in heritage and monolingual Greek, Russian and Turkish. https://doi.org/10.18452/29345

Özsoy, O., Blum, F. (2023). Exploring individual variation in Turkish heritage speakers’ complex linguistic productions: Evidence from discourse markers. Applied Psycholinguistics.

Özsoy, O., Çiçek, B., Özal, Z., Gagarina, N., & Sekerina, I. A. (2023). Turkish-German heritage speakers’ predictive use of case: Webcam-based vs. in-lab eye-tracking. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1155585. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1155585

Oikonomou, D., Rizou, V., Bondarenko, D., Özsoy, O., & Alexiadou, A. (2022). Scalar and Counterfactual Approximatives: Investigating Heritage Greek in the USA and Germany. Languages. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010011

Özsoy, O., Iefremenko, K., & Schroeder, C. (2022). Shifting and Expanding Clause Combining Strategies in Heritage Turkish Varieties. Languages, 7(3), Art. 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030242

Schäfer, F., Özsoy, O., & Bondarenko, D. (2021). On Disjoint Reference Effects in Short Passives. Proceedings of WCCFL 39. Proceedings of WCCFL 39.

Presentations (selected)

Email me for any of the slides of these or other talks.

Oikonomou, D., Balas, V., Triantafyllopoulos, I., Portner, P., Özsoy, O., & Tsakali, V. (2024). Mood selection and likelihood: An experimental study in Greek. XPRAG.it 2024, IRCCS San Camillo Hospital, Venice.

Özsoy, O. (2024a). Acquisition of pronouns in typologically different languages: Morphological richness and pro-drop. Pre- and Protomorphology workshop.

Özsoy, O. (2024b). Proficiency and cognitive skills modulate Turkish monolinguals’ and heritage speakers’ aspect processing and comprehension. Linguistics Seminar Talk, University College London.

Özsoy, O. (2024c). Verb aspect processing in monolingual and heritage bilingual speakers of Turkish. PoLaR lab reading group, UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

Özsoy, O., Büyükyıldırım, N., & Özceçelik, Ö. (2024a). Proficiency and cognitive skills modulate Turkish monolinguals’ and heritage speakers’ aspect processing and comprehension. Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing (AMLaP), University of Edinburgh.

Özsoy, O., Büyükyıldırım, N., & Özceçelik, Ö. (2024b). Verb aspect processing in monolingual and bilingual heritage speakers of Turkish. 5th International Symposium on Bilingual and L2 Processing in Adults and Children (ISBPAC 2024), Swansea University.

Martynova, M., Rizou, V., Özsoy, O., Alexiadou, A., Szucsich, L., & Gagarina, N. (2023, October). Is it over yet? Grammatical aspect in heritage Greek, Russian and Turkish. WILA 14, Universität Flensburg.

Özsoy, O. (2023d, December). Verb aspect processing and production in mono- and bilingual Turkish. Brown Bag Lunch - institute meetings, Leibniz-Center General Linguistics, Berlin.

Özsoy, O. (2023c, October). Psycho- und korpuslinguistische Untersuchungen zum Griechischen, Russischen und Türkischen in Deutschland. Forum Linguistik, Universität Bonn.

Özsoy, O., Fridman, C., & Büyükyıldırım, N. (2023, September). Sentiments towards heritage languages. RUEG 2023 conference, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Özsoy, O., Borbála Sallai, Burbelko, M., & Prozorova, A. (2023, March). Does pro-drop in heritage languages influence null subject use in speakers’ majority German? Annual Conference of the German Linguistics Association, Universität zu Köln.

Özsoy, O., Burbelko, M., Sallai, B., & Prozorova, A. (2023, August). “vallah war geschockt” Subject-drop in heritage and monolingual speakers of German. The 32nd Conference of the European Second Language Association (euroSLA 32), University of Birmingham.

Bondarenko, D., Özsoy, O., & Kastner, I. (2019a, March). Sensitivity to Allomorphy in Morphological Processing [Poster]. CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Boulder, Colorado.

Bondarenko, D., Özsoy, O., & Kastner, I. (2019b, September). Sensitivity to Allomorphy in Morphological Processing [Poster]. Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing, Moscow Higher School of Economics.

Current projects

Oikonomou, D., Miyagawa, S., Özsoy, O., Bektaş, R., & Vardakis, G. (in prep). Condition C violations in English, German, Greek, Italian, Russian, Turkish revisited.

Özsoy, O., Büyükyıldırım, N., Aşkın, U., Özceçelik, Ö., & Sekerina, I. (in prep). Aspect processing in Turkish-German heritage speakers.

Özsoy, O., Fridman, C., & Büyükyıldırım, N. (in prep). Sentiments towards heritage languages.

Özsoy, O., Haffner, E., & Gagarina, N. (in prep). Pronoun acquisition in children: Longitudinal data from Croation, Estonian, German, Greek, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish data.

Özsoy, O., Iefremenko, K., Schroeder, C., Gagarina, N., & Büyükyıldırım, N. (in prep). Case alternations in mono-, bi- and tri-lingual Turkish speakers: Evidence from the accusative and dative.

Teaching

2024 (Summer). Theoretical and empirical challenges of multilingual language acquisition. Department of German Language and Linguistics; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

2023 (Winter). Introduction to linguistics of spoken languages (in German). Department of Deaf Studies, Sign Languages & Interpreting; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

2022 (Winter). Introduction to linguistics of spoken languages (in German). Department of Deaf Studies, Sign Languages & Interpreting; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Scientific outreach activities (selection)

Özsoy, O. (2023a, April). Mehrsprachigkeit—Wie geht das? Workshopreihe für Eltern von Kleinkindern, Kiezoase Schöneberg.

Özsoy, O. (2023b, September). Mehrsprachigkeit—Wie geht das? Workshopreihe für Eltern von Kleinkindern, Kiezoase Schöneberg.

Özsoy, O. (2023c, September). Wer ist mehrsprachig, und ist das etwas Gutes oder Schlechtes? Leibniz’ Book A Scientist, World Wide Web.

Özsoy, O., Büyükyıldırım, N., Linscheid, P., Burbelko, M., Çakır, İ. D., Multani, P., Brüggemann, J., Bunk, O., & RUEG Team. (2023, June). Guckst Du noch, oder sprichst du schon? Eye-Tracking und Sprachforschung zum Mitmachen. Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2023, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft Berlin.

Özsoy, O., Marimon, M., & Langus, A. (2023, November). Eyes as a Window into Language. Berlin Science Week 2023, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

To my fellow students and aspiring linguists

If you're also a student and can't stop thinking about linguistics, feel cordially invited to join our open linguistics group which I'm the main organizer of. All info at www.klesekreis.de..

If you're a first-gen and/or BIPoC or student who's looking for support and networking, feel free to reach out anytime. We can talk and try to find helpful mentorship programs and scholarships for you.

Here's a pic of me feasting on some delicious Çiğ Köfte (arguably the best and healthiest vegan fast food in the Mediterranean) in my parents' hometown (Şarkışla):

Onur posing with Çiğ Köfte

Last updated: 4 October 2024.

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