Extra Talk – Polina Berezovskaya: Presupposition (In)Sensitivity in Monolingual Turkish and Bilingual Turkish-German Speakers: An Experimental Investigation

While the scientific discourse has been primarily concerned with English and other Indo-European languages, little is known about the broader cross-linguistic picture with respect to presuppositions (PSPs). In general, the investigation into universals and parameters of variation, especially in the realm of pragmatics, still has a lot of field to cover (cf. von Fintel and Mattewson 2008, Beck 2021). This is even more true for bilingual grammar. This set of experiments investigates the acceptability of three Turkish presuppositional triggers triggers yine (‘again’), hala (‘still’) and de (‘also’) in differing contexts in mono- and bilingual speakers. The overarching question is whether PSPs are functionally the same in Turkish and German. From first glance, no differences are expected, because the lexically triggered PSP in both languages is hypothesized to be the same. However, there is preliminary evidence that monolingual and bilingual grammar might differ with respect to PSPs. Berezovskaya, Beck and Hörnig (2023) found differences between monolingual Turkish and bilingual Turkish-German speakers in an exploratory study concerned with correlative constructions in Turkish. The result is surprising if we assume that presupposition triggers in Turkish and German give rise to the same PSPs in both languages. The current series of experiments with Turkish monolinguals and Turkish-German bilinguals (+ German monolinguals as a control group) sets out to replicate the results from Berezovskaya & al. (2023) more systematically, and explain the findings with respect to the underlying mechanisms.|

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