I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Boğaziçi University. My work spans two strands of research: theoretical morphosyntax and computational linguistics. On the theoretical side, I work on phenomena revolving around case, agreement, differential object marking, and null arguments. On the computational side, I work on linguistic capabilities of neural nets, benchmarking, natural language inference, sentiment analysis, and ontological representations.

I received my PhD in 2019 from Rutgers University. My advisor was Mark Baker and my dissertation is Agreement, Case, and Nominal Licensing.

Before joining Boğaziçi University, I worked as a linguist on various NLP projects at Facebook and Google.

Keywords

  • Case, Ergativity, Case/Agreement-Split
  • Partial agreement, Agreement disruptions
  • Differential Object Marking
  • Sentiment Analysis, Natural Language Inference, Ontology

Key languages

  • Turkish (Turkic)
  • Kurmanji (Indo-Iranian)
  • Laz (Caucasian)
  • Hindi (Indo-Aryan), Kashmiri (Dardic)

{ } Reading Groups & Projects

  • ST@BU
  • BOUN Comp Ling (Weekly Reading Group)
  • Sentiment Analysis Benchmarking for Turkish
  • Null Arguments and Alignment Splits

Research

Papers & Manuscripts

Atlamaz, Ümit, Ömer Demirok and Metin Bağrıaçık. (2023). Heritage Grammars as Checkpoints in Acquisition: A Dependent Case Theoretic Account. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics vol 8 (1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.9236.

Atlamaz, Ümit and Balkız Öztürk. (2023). Reciprocals in Turkish. Languages vol 8: pp. 1-39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030158.

Atlamaz, Ümit. (2023). Differential Object Marking and Nominal Licensing. Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi, vol. 34: pp. 27 - 56. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18492/dad.1213001.

Atlamaz, Ümit and Ömer Demirok. (2023). Generative Grammar Approaches to Turkish, 6. Coordination. In Encyclopedia of Turkic Languages and Linguistics Online. General Editor: Lars Johanson. Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2667-3029_ETLO_COM_032539.

Şahin, Karahan and Ümit Atlamaz. (2023). TransMorpher: A Phonologically Informed Transformer-based Morphological Analyzer. In Proceedings of ALTNLP 2022. CEUR Workshop Proceedings Vol 3315. Link: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3315/paper16.pdf.

Atlamaz, Ümit & Baker, Mark (2018). On Partial Agreement and Oblique Case. Syntax21.3: 195-237.

Atlamaz, Ümit & Baker, Mark (2016). Agreement With and Past Oblique Subjects: New Considerations from Kurmanji. In Proceedings of the Forty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society: Volume 1, ed. Christopher Kimmerly & Brandon Prickett, 39-49. Amherst, MA: GLSA.

Atlamaz, Ümit. (2016). Merging Modifiers of an NP before Its Arguments. In Proceedings of the 33rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. Kyeong-min Kim et al., 47-56. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Baker, Mark. & Atlamaz, Ümit. (MS). On the Relationship of Case to Agreement in Split-Ergative Kurmanji.

Atlamaz, Ümit. (2013). Cyclic Agreement and Empty Slots in Pazar Laz. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Languages of the Caucasus, pp. 18-31.

Atlamaz, Ümit. (2012). Ergative as Accusative Case: Evidence from Adıyaman Kurmanji. Ms. Boğaziçi University.

Atlamaz, Ümit. (2011). Adverbial Clauses in Pazar Laz. In B. Öztürk, & M. Pöchtrager, Pazar Laz (pp. 139-144). LINCOM EUROPA.

Talks & Posters

Adjectival Diminutives in Turkish. Dissecting Morphological Theory 3 (IMM20), September 1-4, 2022. (With Furkan Dikmen).

Revisiting Ergative Case in Laz. Theoretical Linguistics and Languages of the Caucasus. İstanbul Bilgi University, June 18-19, 2022. (With Ömer Demirok).

TransMorpher: A Phonologically Informed Transformer-based Morphological Analyzer. The International Conference on Agglutinative Language Technologies as a challenge of Natural Language Processing (ALTNLP) June 7-8, 2022. (With Karahan Şahin).

Differential Object Marking in Asia Minor Greek Revisited. Formal Approaches to Contact in/with Turkish, May 19-20, 2022. (With Metin Bağrıaçık).

From Split-Ergativity Towards Accusativity in Heritage Kurmanji and Georgian. Heritage Language Syntax 2, December 2021. (With Ömer Demirok & Metin Bağrıaçık).

Two types of Differential Object Marking.Boğaziçi University, November 2020.

A Typology of Agreement and Case Interactions. LingDay, Boğaziçi University, May 2019.

On the Interaction of Agreement and Overt Case. Kansas University, Lawrence, KS 2018.

A Typology of Case and Agreement Interactions. NYU Brown Bag Series, New York, 2018

Differential Object Marking and Nominal Licensing. LSA 2018 Annual Meeting. Salt Lake City, January 2018.

Reanalyzing Indo-Iranian “stems”: A case study of Adıyaman Kurmanji. Turkish, Turkic and the languages of Turkey, UMass Amherst, November 21–22, 2015.(With Laura Kalin)

MI Questions in Turkish. Turkish, Turkic and the languages of Turkey, UMass Amherst, November 21–22, 2015.

On Agreement With and Past Oblique Subjects: New Considerations Based on Kurmanji. NELS 46, Concordia University, October 17, 2015.(With Mark Baker)

Extending Greenberg’s Universal 20: Adjectives, Arguments and the NP. Brown Bag Talk, Stony Brook University, May 6, 2015.

Functional Projections and Movement in DP : What ezafe teaches us. RULing IX, Rutgers University, April 2014.

Ergativity, Case & Coordination in Adıyaman Kurmanji. BLC. Boğaziçi University, 2012.

Cyclic Agreement and Empty Slots in Pazar Laz. The 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Languages of the Caucasus, 2011.

Teaching

Courses Taught

@Boğaziçi
  • Syntax and Semantics of Modern Turkish (Ling 314)
  • Computational Methods in Linguistics
    • @Rutgers
    • Introduction to Linguistics
    • Expository Writing

Course Material

  • Upcoming
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