Jaklin Kornfilt is a theoretical linguist and professor at Syracuse University who is well known for her contributions to the fields of syntax, morphology, Turkish language and grammar, and Turkic language typology.
Early life and education Kornfilt graduated from German High School in Istanbul, Turkey. She then graduated from Heidelberg University with a bachelor's degree in applied linguistics and translation studies in 1970. She obtained a Master of Arts degree in theoretical linguistics from Harvard University in 1980. She earned a PhD again in theoretical linguistics from the same university in 1985. Her PhD thesis was "Case Marking, Agreement, and Empty Categories in Turkish".
Career After graduation, Kornfilt began to work as an instructor at Syracuse University in 1983. She became professor of linguistics in 2003 in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics (LLL). At Syracuse University, she is also former Director of the Linguistic Studies Program and of the Computational Linguistics Program. She also organized and led a linguistics working group of The Central New York Humanities Corridor, an interdisciplinary partnership with Syracuse University, Cornell University, and the University of Rochester from 2005 to 2010. Kornfilt was awarded the Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bamberg in 2010. In 2021, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cyprus for 'her contributions to theoretical and Turkish linguistics'.
Selected Research
Descriptive Grammar of Turkish Kornfilt is the author of Turkish (1997), a comprehensive overview of the grammatical properties of the Turkish language. This work is renowned for its near-exhaustive survey of the syntactic and morphological systems of Turkish and is considered the major successor to Turkish-language descriptive grammars of G.L. Lewis’ Turkish Grammar (1967) and Robert Underhill's Turkish Grammar (1976). Her work provided a thorough investigation of the syntactical and morphological properties of Turkish and defining its key typological features and universal characteristics. Her work is a contribution to the Descriptive Grammars series by the Routledge publishing company. The series overviews a variety of languages through the lens of theoretical and descriptive analyses, using a framework called the Questionnaire as a structural tool for comparing grammars across language types. More specifically, the Questionnaire surveys language features in a manner that is:
sufficiently comprehensive to cover the major structures of any language that are likely to be of theoretical interest; sufficiently explicit to make cross-language comparisons a feasible undertaking (in particular, through the detailed numbering key); and sufficiently flexible to encompass the range of variety that is found in human language Kornfilt's text is one of the first Turkish grammars to "incorporate overtly the native speaker's linguistic intuitions into its language description", as Kornfilt indicates various degrees to which ungrammatical sentences may be judged to be ungrammatical. As she explains in the preface, "[a]nother unusual feature of this book, and especially of the syntax chapter, is probably the fact that shadings of grammaticality or acceptability are noted, rather than reflecting an all-or-nothing approach". Structure of Turkish In the preface, Kornfilt traces the genealogical history of Turkish as the Turkic language with the most speakers and a member of the Altaic language family. She notes that Turkish was written in Arabic script from the beginning of its history in the Anatolian peninsula, until its orthography was converted to the Latin alphabet following the language reforms of 1928, upon the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. She emphasizes that this Modern Standard Turkish is the focus of the book. In five chapters, she surveys Syntax, Morphology, Phonology, Ideophones and Interjections, and Lexicon. With a total of 575 pages, the book devotes an overwhelming majority of attention to Syntax and Morphology. Given that even the Morphology chapter often describes syntactical properties, Kornfilt is primarily interested in the syntax of Turkish: Ch 1. "Syntax": 211 pages Ch 2. "Morphology": 270 pages Ch 3. "Phonology": 32 pages Ch 4. "Ideophones and Interjections": 3 pages Ch 5. "Lexicon": 16 pages "Syntax" and "Morphology" Across sixteen subparts, the chapter surveys aspects of Turkish syntax: sentence types, subordination, internal sentence structures, phrasal units, negation, anaphora, reflexives, reciprocals, comparative constructions, equatives, possessive constructions, yes–no questions, question-word questions, questions in coordinate structures, means of expressing emphasis, topic, movement processes, and word classes. A notable innovation of Kornfilt's syntax is observation of the relationship of the palatal glide [y] to copula and auxiliary word classes. Previous grammars such as those of Lewis (1967) and Underhill (1976) identified -DIr, -IDI, -ImIş as "copula" or "auxiliary". Kornfilt argues that the palatal glide [y] belongs in this category as well, as it "shows up after a predicate noun, adjective, or adverbial that has a stem-final vowel; this glide precedes the tense suffix, if there is one, and agreement suffix if there is no tense". Additionally, Kornfilt denies the existence of a separate topic marker in Turkish syntax. This contradicts the view that the form -ise (copula + conditional) or the particle de are topic markers, as in the following sentences: (Sentence 1) Fasulye-yi ise en çok Ayşe sev-iyor. Bean-Acc. Cop Supl most Ayşe love-pres. 'As for beans, Ayşe likes them the most.' (Sentence 2) Fasulye-yi de en çok Ayşe sev-iyor. Bean-Acc. Part Supl most Ayşe love-pres. 'As for beans, Ayşe likes them the most.'
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
