Exploring Cypriot Turkish: An overview and some reflexions

Languages change, adapt, and evolve, reflecting the complexities of human culture across geography and, most importantly, identities. This notion mirrors the current state of Cypriot Turkish, as a variant of Turkish. Cypriot Turkish is a vibrant linguistic variance rather than a static form. Historical and sociolinguistic influences have played a crucial role in shaping the course of Cypriot Turkish, setting the stage and establishing the basis for its evolving structure and societal functions. In this regard, Cypriot Turkish has been a subject of scholarly research for decades. There is an ongoing debate regarding the origin and development of Cypriot Turkish. All these studies provide a foundational basis for expanding comprehension of the dynamic of Cypriot Turkish by examining language development over time, documenting the specific structural features, and highlighting patterns of variation influenced by regional and social factors. Consequently, in light of these points, the implications of these studies deserve to be explored further. The earlier bibliographical studies provide primary insight into preserving significant works and evaluating how Cypriot Turkish studies' focus has shifted over time. While these bibliographical attempts provide a general overview, they lack an in-depth analysis of findings to gaining a more holistic understanding of the linguistic features of a language. Concerning this issue, this current study systematically reviews the existing research on Cypriot Turkish, aiming to provide an overview of previous research and offer a personal reflection. The main focus of the study is to examine the main linguistic features of Cypriot Turkish identified in the body of current literature, and analyze how these features differ from standard Turkish, and in which way they show similarities with contact languages -namely, Greek and English. Beside these objectives, this current study also focuses on existence of the instances of variation give rise to optionality Cypriot Turkish. The findings of the study have provided insightful results regarding clausal syntax features. As a result of this study, it has been found out that the most distinctive features appear in relative and object clauses along with subjunctive structures. Taken together, these results suggest that Cypriot Turkish is not a simple extension of Anatolian dialects; rather, it came into existence through deeper language contact processes. The current results open a new area of research in nominal syntax and its dynamics with clausal syntactic structures. Another significant observation addresses the word structure of Cypriot Turkish. An upcoming study can address the word structure of Cypriot Turkish, taking into consideration all languages of the island, including Kormakiti Arabic.