The grammar of Karamanlides' Turkish within the framework of miscellanous texts

In this study, Karamanlides' written language was analysed within the framework of miscellaneous printed texts with the aim of revealing the basic structure of Karamanlidika and its grammatical peculiarities. Karamanlides were Orthodox Christian Turkish-speaking people, who lived in mostly central Asia Minor and İstanbul, until the Exchange of Populations in 1923. They wrote Turkish using Greek alphabet. According to the mentined protocol signed between Turkey and Greece in 1923, Karamanlides were sent to Greece as the other Orthodox Christians who had lived outside Istanbul. Although the first generation of exchanged experienced many difficulties, the next generations got used to this new environment and they have adopted Greek as their primary language. In this study, Hikaye-yi Koroglu (The Story of Koroglu), printed in 1879, was scaned as the main material. Besides, 4 printed texts were also scanned. These texts were under study in terms of phonetics, morphology and syntax. The introduction part includes the presentation of the methodology and sources used this study, the history of Karamanlides and their literature. The studies published previously on this subject was also reviewed. In the first chapter, both the ability of Greek alphabet to express Turkish and the vowel system of Karamanlidika were examined alongside with examples to demonstrate the phonetic properties and events in the sample texts. In the second chapter, the word classes in Karamanlidika were detaily investigated in the terms of their functions and structures. The word formation of Karamanlidika was also dealed in this chapter. I dwelt upon the development of nouns and verbs and derivation ways, the origin of the root words, as to whether they emanate from Turkish or another language. The existence of such words and their forms in historical Turkic languages, if any, was also mentioned. In the third chapter, the various types and characteristics of phrases and sentences in Karamanlidika were classified with excerpts from sample texts. For the arrangment of the chapters, previous studies on Turkish grammar were made use of. Key Words: Karamanlidika, grammar, phonetic, morphology, word formation, syntax