In my research at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and Bilkent, I currently focus on four (inter-related) strands:

a) I work on how acquiring a writing system influences one’s grammatical knowledge in their native language with Ewa Dabrowska. There is very little research on this and it adds to the ongoing idea that learning literacy may indeed influence one’s L1 attainment. This is quite important not just theoretically but also from an adult education perspective.

b) I investigate literacy and its concomitant effects on narratives/story telling and theory of mind skills. Research on this is very scarce but it holds very important theoretical significance for both adult education but also cognitive sciences.

c) I work on individual differences in native language attainment and how print exposure predicts these differences. I mainly work on Turkish but have also worked with native English speakers with Ewa Dabrowska. Work on this is quite important as nativist approaches have engendered the idea that all native speakers converge on the same grammar without providing much evidence for it.

d) as a person who was trained in English language teaching, earlier in my research, I worked on how we can apply findings from usage-based construction grammar to foreign language teaching, broadly speaking. This covers areas such as textbook analyses, material creation, and teacher training programs.