EBRU TÜRKER

Lecturer of Korean
Language, Linguistics, and Pedagogy

708 Old Engineering Hall
412-624-5562
Fax: 412-624-3458
turker@pitt.edu

First Year Korean 1: Thursdays 2:00-3:00 or by appointment

Second Year Korean 1: Tuesdays 2:00-3:00 or by appointment

Introduction to Korean Films: Mondays 4-5:00 or by appointment.

Taught Courses:

“Why do you study Korean?” or “How do you speak Korean that well?” These are the main questions that I get when I meet people for the first time, especially Koreans. As some of you may know, neither of my parents are Korean and thus don’t have any knowledge about Korea before I started studying Korean. I started studying Korean language in Turkey because of my curiosity of learning something different from other people. As I was studying Korean language I have realized that I enjoy learning a foreign language and eventually started developing an interest in languages and their structure and mechanism. Awarded with a 3.5 years of full-scholarship from the Korean Ministry of Education, I had the most wonderful and prosperous experience in Korea during the time that I did my MA in linguistics at the Seoul National University. Having valuable friendship with my Korean classmates and enormous support from my Korean professors, I have decided to continue working on Korean language and linguistics. It was one of my best decisions to choose the University of Hawaii to do my Ph.D. in Korean language and linguistics. Throughout my study at the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, I had a chance to develop my academic interests in Korean linguistics and to teach elementary and intermediate Korean language classes.

My primary research interests are Korean syntax and semantics, Korean as a foreign language, cognitive linguistics and constructional grammar.

My strong interest in the Korean linguistics was motivated by the near absence of previous research comparing Korean and Turkish as well as Japanese. My current work, PhD dissertation, is on the Locatives in Korean and Turkish with special attention to various usages of locatives in the two languages.

My research in the field of Korean as a foreign language focuses on the interference between L1 and L2. I maintain a strong interest of the learning difficulties of learners whose native language is SOV language and SVO language when learning Korean as a foreign language.

I am also working on the cognitive linguistics and constructional grammar where I study various topics such as case and postposition in Korean and Turkish.

EDUCATION

08/2000 - 2005 Ph.D., Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures, Korean Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, U.S.A.

03/1995 - 08/1997 MA, Department of Linguistics, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.

03/1994 - 11/1994 Korean Language Program (from 3rd level to 5th level), Language Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.

09/1989 - 06/1993 BA, Department of Korean Language & Literature, Faculty of Letters, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey.

PUBLICATIONS

To appear. Dative Constructions in Koean and Turkish. Constructions. Selected Papers from the Third International Conference on Constructional Grammar, Marseille, France.

2003 The Notion of “Transitivity” in Turkish and Korean. Explorations in Korean Language and Linguistics. (eds) Gregory K. Iverson & Sang-Cheol Ahn. Hankook Publishing Co.

2002 A Contrastive Study of “(l)-ul” Case Marker in Korean among Foreign Language Learners. Proceedings: Selected Papers from the Sixth College-wide Conference for Students in Language, Linguistics and Literature. University of Hawaii at Manoa.

1996 The Comparison of Long Vowels in Korean and Turkish. Proceedings of the First Seoul International Conference on Phonetic Sciences. The Phonetic Society of Korea.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

2008 Designing and Developing Oral Examinations in Korean Classrooms. 13th Annual Conference of the American Association of Teachers for Korean, University of SUNY at Binghamton, Binghamton. June 27-29.

2006 Korean Locative Expressions and Their Pedagogical Implications in L2 Korean: A Cognitive Grammar Approach. 11th Annual Conference of the American Association of Teachers for Korean, Rutgers University, New Jersey. June 22-23.

2005 The Locatives in Korean and Turkish: A Cognitive Grammar Analysis. Asia Over Lunch Spring 2005 Lecture Series. University of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. March 24.

2004 Turkish ‘-(y)e,’ Korean ‘-ey,’ and Japanese ‘ni’: The Construction of Meaning. The 2004 LSK International Conference. Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. July 28-30.

2004 Dative Construction in Korean and Turkish. The 14th International Conference On Korean Linguistics. Colakli Center of Ankara University, Antalya, Turkey. July 12-16.

2004 Dative Construction in Korean and Turkish. The Third International Conference On Constructional Grammar. Marseille. France. July 7-10.

2003 Grammaticalizatian of the Korean Dative Case Marker. 7th Annual College-Wide Conference for Graduate Students in Languages, Linguistics, and Literature. University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa April 12.

2002 The Notion of “Transitivity” in Korean and Turkish. The 13th International Conference on Korean Linguistics. University of Oslo. July 8-10.

2002 A Contrastive Study of the “-(l)-ul” Case Marker in Korean among Foreign Language Learners. The 6th Annual Conference for Graduate Students in the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. April 20.