A. Sumru Özsoy is a leading

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and Turkish academic working at

Boğaziçi University Boğaziçi University (Turkish language, Turkish: ''Boğaziçi Üniversitesi''), also known as Bosphorus University, is a Public university, public research university in Istanbul, Turkey, historically tied to a former American educational insti ...

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

Education

Özsoy received a bachelor's degree in

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

from

Robert College The American Robert College of Istanbul ( or ), often abbreviated as Robert or RC, is a Selective school, highly selective, Independent school, independent, mixed-sex education, co-educational, Education in Turkey#Private schools, private Second ...

in 1971. She obtained a master's degree in linguistics from

in 1975 and a PhD in linguistics from the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

in 1983. Title of her

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

thesis is "''Kendi-reflexivization in Turkish: A syntactic, semantic and discourse analysis''".

Career

Özsoy started her career as an English instructor in 1972. She was a teaching assistant at the University of Michigan from 1977 to 1983. Then she joined Boğaziçi University in 1983 and became professor of linguistics at the Department of Western Languages and Literatures in 1994. She took part in the founding of the Linguistics Department of Boğaziçi University and was forced to retired in 2022 by the appointed rector Naci İnci who has close relations with

AK Parti The Justice and Development Party ( , AK PARTİ), abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. It has been the ruling party of Turkey since 2002. Third-party sources ...

. Her entry to the campus was forbidden unlawfully. She represents the Turkish Linguistics Community at the Permanent International Committee of Linguists (CPIL).

Work

Özsoy's fields of study are

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

, structure of Turkish,

Caucasian languages The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Linguistic comparison allows t ...

cognitive linguistics Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are cons ...

sign languages Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sig ...

and

Turkish Sign Language Turkish Sign Language () is the language used by the deaf community in Turkey. As with other sign languages, TİD has a unique grammar that is different from the oral languages used in the region. TİD uses a two-handed manual alphabet which is ...

. She is one of the linguists who studied the now

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

language Ubykh focusing on its syntax. She studied with

Tevfik Esenç Tevfik Esenç (; 1904 – 7 October 1992) was a Turkish citizen of Ubykh origin, known for being the last speaker of the Ubykh language. He was fluent in Ubykh, Adyghe and Turkish. After his death in 1992, the Ubykh language went extinct desp ...

, the last fluent speaker of Ubykh, in his later years. She organized an international conference, namely Conference on Northwest Caucasian Linguistics, at Boğaziçi University in 1994 in memory of

Georges Dumézil Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French Philology, philologist, Linguistics, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and comparative mythology, mythology. He was a prof ...

, who analysed the language in detail, and Esenç. She is the author of several books, including ''Türkçe-Turkish'' (1999) and ''Türkçe'nin Yapısı. Sesbilim'' (2004; ''Structure of Turkish. Phonology''). She has also published numerous articles in her fields of study. She was the coeditor of '' Dilbilim Araştırmaları'' from 1990 to 2011 and has been among the editors of ''

Turkic Languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

'' since 1997 which is published by the Harrassowitz publishing house.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ozsoy, A. Sumru Living people Robert College alumni Boğaziçi University alumni University of Michigan alumni Academic staff of Boğaziçi University Turkish women academics Linguists from Turkey Linguists of Turkic languages Linguists of Northwest Caucasian languages Ubykh language Women orientalists Women linguists 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century Turkish women 21st-century Turkish women