Nazik Dinçtopal Deniz
Principal Investigator
Website: http://web.boun.edu.tr/nazik.dinctopal/
Email: nazik.dinctopal@boun.edu.tr
Phone: (+90) 212 359 4612
Dr. Deniz received her Ph.D. in linguistics from the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. She is a full-time faculty member at Boğaziçi University, Department of Foreign Language Education. She has a secondary appointment in Cognitive Science Graduate Program. Her research focuses on first and second language processing. She is specifically interested in rhythmic influences in sentence processing and prosodic disambiguation in syntactic and morphological processing in Turkish. She also investigates syntactic, lexical and prosodic factors in sentence processing routines of second language speakers.
Current Lab Members
Didem Bayrak Kurt
Ph.D. Student in Foreign Language Education
E-mail: didm.bayrak@gmail.com
Didem graduated from Foreign Language Education Department, Boğaziçi University in 2016 and joined the department’s graduate program in the same year. She works as an English instructor in the School of Languages at İstanbul Cerrrahpaşa University. During her undergraduate studies she worked as a student research assistant in the Developmental Psychology Lab at Koç University and was part of a research project examining morphosyntactic cues in the acquisition of argument structure in Turkish. She is interested in sentence processing in the first and second language.
Özge Bakay
Ph.D. Student in Linguistics
E-mail: bakayozge@gmail.com
Özge graduated from the Foreign Language Education department at Boğaziçi University, with a minor degree in Linguistics in 2017. She completed the M.A. Program in the Foreign Language Education department at Boğaziçi University in 2020. In her MA thesis, she investigated the processing of center-embedded sentences in Turkish. Since 2015, she has been teaching Turkish to foreigners at the Turkish Language and Culture Summer Program at Boğaziçi University. She also worked as a research assistant for a Turkish NLP project for 2 years. Özge is now a second-year Ph.D. student in the Linguistics department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is working with Dr. Brian Dillon. Her current research interests are the processing of Binding Theory in Turkish and NPI processing in Turkish.
Münir Özturhan
Ph.D. Student in Linguistics
E-mail: munir.ozturhan@gmail.com
Münir got his BA and MA from the Foreign Language Education Department at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. He worked with Dr. Nazik Dinçtopal Deniz during his MA at Boğaziçi University and earned his master’s degree upon completion of his thesis titled “Processing reflexives in the second language: Evidence from eye-tracking” in 2018. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Linguistics at the University of Kansas and works as a graduate research assistant in Neurolinguistics & Language Processing Lab. His main research interests are psycholinguistics, the acquisition and processing of (morpho)syntax by adult second language learners, and sentence processing in Turkish.
Onur Keleş
M.A. Student in Linguistics
E-mail: onurkeles.boun@gmail.com Website: kelesonur.github.io
Onur graduated from the Department of Foreign Language Education in July 2021. His main research interests include sign language linguistics, (atypical) language development and sentence processing. He is currently working as an English Instructor at Istanbul 29 Mayis University. In the lab, he is actively working on two projects that investigates sentence processing among ASD individuals and NPI processing in L1 and L2 Turkish. Previously, Onur worked as undergraduate research assistant in the Sign Language Lab where he led two research projects where I explored the cognitive and linguistic effects of linguistic deprivation on the narrative abilities and verbal fluency of deaf individuals who use Turkish Sign Language.
Mustafa Kürşat Halat
M.A. Student in Foreign Language Education
E-mail: mkhalat@outlook.com
Kürşat graduated from the Dept. of Foreign Language Education at Boğaziçi University in 2021. He is now pursing his masters in Linguistics. Besides his teaching experience, he has been doing academic translations for four years. His main interest is natural language processing focusing on syntactic analysis.
Oylum Savlak
M.A. Student in Foreign Language Education
E-mail: oylumsavlak@gmail.com
Oylum graduated from Foreign Language Education Department at Boğaziçi University in 2020. She is currently an MA student in the same department. She also works as an English Language Teacher, teaching primary and middle school EFL students. Her research interests involve discourse processing, literacy development in both first and second language, and individual differences in language comprehension.
Ege Aydaş
B.A. Student in Foreign Language Education
E-mail: ege.aydas@boun.edu.tr
Currently a senior in Foreign Language Education Department, Boğaziçi University, Ege is mainly interested in sentence processing and Turkish as a second language. He is also learning Japanese and would like to integrate it in his further studies.
Damla Suzan Kabak
B.A. Student in Foreign Language Education
E-mail: damla.kabak@boun.edu.tr
Currently a senior in FLED at Boğaziçi University. Damla has had various teaching experiences in English and Portuguese. Her main research interests are the acquisition of English as L1 and L2 and bilingual sentence processing. Having acquired Portuguese and Spanish proficiency at the University of Minho, Damla has developed an interest in comparing and contrasting lexical and syntactic processing in the Romance languages.
Doğa Ünelli
B.A. Student in Foreign Language Education
E-mail: zeynep.unelli@boun.edu.tr
Doğa is currently a junior student in Foreign Language Education department at Boğaziçi University. Her main areas of interest are neurolinguistics, specifically the neurophysiological mechanisms in language learning and acquisition of sign language.
Eda Ilgım Biçici
B.A. Student in Translation and Interpreting Studies
E-mail: eda.bicici@boun.edu.tr
Eda Ilgım is currently a senior in Translation and Interpreting Studies at Boğaziçi University. She has started her research journey with an internship at Koç University’s Language and Communication Development Laboratory and continued with Cardiff University’s Psycholinguistics Laboratory in Wales. She is currently working as an undergraduate research assistant at Psycholinguistics Research Laboratory and Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory at Boğaziçi University and mainly interested in cognitive processes behind interpreting, neurolinguistics, and cognitive development of bilingual children.
Our Graduates
Fatih Sivridağ
M.A. in Cognitive Science
E-mail: fatih.sivridag@boun.edu.tr
Fatih completed his undergraduate degree in Foreign Language Education at Boğaziçi University in 2012 and holds an M.A. degree from the Cognitive Science Program at the same university. His research focuses on L2 reading comprehension and its relation to working memory capacity and L2 proficiency. Currently, he works as a full-time teacher at Mustafa Kemal Anatolian High School in Sarıyer.
Didar Karadağ
M.A. in Psychology
E-mail: d.karadag@lancaster.ac.uk
Didar received her Bachelor’s degree from Boğaziçi University with a major in foreign language education and a minor in linguistics. She holds an M.A. degree from the Psychology Department at the same university. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student in developmental psychology at Lancaster University. She works as a researcher in Babylab Lancaster and Professor Gert Westermann’s Developmental Cognitive Science Lab. She is interested curiosity-driven mechanisms of learning and its relation to emergence of early teaching behavior, and early language acquisition with an emphasis on word learning.
Hilal Serin Demirler
M.A. in Foreign Language Education
E-mail: hilalsrn@gmail.com
Hilal graduated from Boğaziçi University, Foreign Language Education Department in 2013 and started the M.A. Program in the same department in 2015. She received her M.A. degree in 2019. She is interested in psycholinguistic aspects of second language acquisition and testing and assessment in foreign language education. Currently, Hilal works as an English lecturer in Istanbul University, School of Foreign Languages. Before joining Istanbul University, she worked at İstanbul Kemerburgaz/Altınbaş University Preparatory School and Terakki Foundation Private Middle School.