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I am mainly interested in language as a faculty for expression of compositional meanings (in contrast to, say, lexical meanings and how they are decomposed or derived). The strong hypothesis in this respect is that languages differ only in their lexicons. I am in favour of testing the strong hypothesis before we entertain the weaker ones. My high school science teacher told me to do that. I usually don't do what I'm told but I make exceptions.

Lexicalising a grammar is crucial for this hypothesis. The underlying idea in fully lexicalising a grammar is the notion of "possible lexical category," as models of what Edmund Husserl called "sensibly distinct representations in the mind." Many of us (radical lexicalists) believe categories need explanation, rather than stipulation. NB. these kinds of categories are knife edges: one side is syntactic, the other semantic. Any lexicalised grammar need do justice to both, unless we start believing in one-edged knives. (The so-called one-edged knives kard, culter, facon etc. are knives with one edge sharpened, since you asked).

I try to work towards a theory of the lexicon--whatever that is. Something 'idiosyncratic' does not need a theory. Naturally, I don't share such an impoverished and incidental view of the lexicon. Rather, language is the infinite closure of the lexicon with respect to an invariant (and finite) combinatory system. (Having said that, I do believe language is a kludge; if I want perfection in nature, I'd study sharks. Lexicon is language with small l, and its combinatorial theory is language with big L.) I guess what I'm saying is that a theory of kludge is a kludge too; it's turtles all the way down.

We can conceive the lexicon as something shaped by the invariant. The invariant can be studied semiotically (extensionally) and psychologically (intensionally). The same goes for the lexicon. But first we must account for Merrill Garrett's insight that ``parsing is a reflex.'' (try turning it off if you're a skeptic). The part and parcel of the strong hypothesis is that this is due to having a combinatory system that is purely computational and oblivious to world matters. No movement, no ghost in the machine, no checking, no caching, no tampering, no tinkering. What you do with that computation in real life is, ehm, the real meaning of life. (What about the mind, you say. I don't know. These hefty global questions usually emanate from certain parts of American East Coast. Ask them.)

More specifically, i am interested in how combinatory and substantive constraints shape surface syntax, and the lexical reflex of that effect. I am also interested in interactions in components--functionally speaking--of a language system: morphology, syntax, semantics, prosody, information structure, what have you. Recently, I have been studying grammatical relations, word order, directionality and categorisation in the lexicon, intonation in grammar, Bayesian sorcery for choosing categories, and morphosyntax, based on a theory of syntax-semantics called Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG).

On the applied side, I am interested in parsers for categorial grammars, and modeling multidomain interactions, such as generation of contextually appropriate discourse entities, and syntax-morphology-phonology trilogy in parsing. Some public tools from applied research are available below, at our lab, and at Edinburgh-born openCCG.

(some relevant papers)

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Some papers

Coltekin, Cagri and Bozsahin, Cem (2007). Syllables, Morphemes and Bayesian Computational Models of Acquiring a Word Grammar.

Proc. of 29th Annual Meeting of Cognitive Science Society, Nashville. (pdf)

Bozsahin, Cem, Asli Goksel (2007). Turkce'de Ezgi: Sozdizim ve Edimle Iliskisi. 21. Dilbilim Kurultayi, Mersin. (doc)

Bozsahin, Cem (DRAFT 1.0). Grammars, Programs and the Chinese Room. (pdf, for comments).

(longer version to appear in 2006 International European Conference on Computing and Philosophy; ECAP)

Bozsahin, Cem (DRAFT v2.0).

Word Order, Word Order Flexibility and the Lexicon (was `Lexical Origins of Word Order and Word Order Flexibility.')

In preparation for a chapter in Theoretical Issues in Word Order, S. Ozsoy (ed.), Kluwer. For comments. (pdf)

Bozsahin, Cem (DRAFT 1.0).

Directionality and the Lexicon: Evidence From Gapping. For comments. (.ps | .pdf).

Bozsahin, Cem (2004).

On the Turkish Controllee.

to appear in ICTL 2004 Proceedings (pdf). for comments

Tutar, Sercan, Cem Bozsahin, and Halit Oguztuzun (2003).

TPD: An Educational Programming Language Based on Turkish Syntax.

The First Balkan Conference in Informatics, (pdf). November, Thessaloniki.

Bozsahin, Cem (2002).

The Combinatory Morphemic Lexicon. Computational Linguistics, 28(2):145-186. (pdf)

Yuksel, Ozgur, and Cem Bozsahin (2002)

Contextually Appropriate Reference Generation. Natural Language Engineering, 8(1):69-89. (pdf| ps)

Bozsahin, Cem (2000).

Gapping and Word Order In Turkish. Proc. of 10th Int. Conf. on Turkish Linguistics, Istanbul, August. (ps)

Bozsahin, Cem, and Deniz Zeyrek. (2000).

Dilbilgisi, bilisim ve bilissel bilim [Grammar, Computation and Cognitive Science]. Dilbilim Arastirmalari 2000 [Research in Linguistics, vol.11]. (ps)

Sehitoglu, Onur, and Cem Bozsahin. (1999).

Lexical Rules and Lexical Organization. in Breadth and Depth of Semantic Lexicons, Evelyn Viegas (ed.), Kluwer. (ps)

Bozsahin, Cem (1998).

Deriving the Predicate-Argument Structure for a Free Word Order Language. Proceedings of COLING-ACL'98, pp. 167-173, Montreal. (ps)

Bozsahin, Cem (1997).

Combinatory Logic and Natural Language Parsing. Elektrik, Turkish J. of EE and CS, 5(3), 347-357. (ps)

Bozsahin, Cem (1996).

Ulamsal dilbilgisi ve Turkce [Categorial Grammar and Turkish]. Dilbilim Arastirmalari 1996 [Research in Linguistics] 7:230-244. (ps)

Bozsahin, Cem and Elvan Gocmen (1995).

A Categorial Framework for Composition in Multiple Linguistic Domains. Proc. of the 4th Int Conf on Cognitive Science of NLP, Dublin (CSNLP'95). (ps)

Oflazer, Kemal, and Cem Bozsahin. (1994).

Turkce Dogal Dil Isleme [Turkish NLP]. Proc. of Turkish Informatics Society TBD'94. (ps)

Bozsahin, Cem, and Nicholas V. Findler. (1992).

Memory-based Hypothesis Formation. Cognitive Science, 16(4):431-454. (3 figures missing). (ps)

Some public-domain tools

• Open CCG
  - This is public software for developing CCG grammars and lexicons.
  - It has several English systems, and small demo systems for Dyirbal, Basque, Tagalog, Turkish and Inuit.
  - The morphosyntactic CCG below is re-implemented in openCCG by Gunes Erkan.
• Morphosyntactic CCG (v. 0.4)
  - Software: tested with SICStus Prolog on Solaris; but likely to work on others as well.
  - Features: CKY parse engine; application and harmonic composition rules; Type raising in grammar; S, N, NP basic cats; / and \ slashes (no |); Morphemic lexicon; Morphosyntactic and attachment modalities; A tiny English lexicon and a Turkish lexicon (inflections, plus a sampler of nouns, verbs, adj etc.)
  - to unfold the tar file: gunzip msccg0.4.tar; tar xvf msccg0.4.tar
  - It is provided solely for research purposes.

Some talks

1. Schonfinkel'den Dilbilime Anlam ve Dizim (Semantics and Syntax From Schonfinkel to Linguistics). ODTU Felsefe Bol. 25. Yil 'Anlam' Kongresi. 19.12.2008
2. Meaning, form and adjacency: Schönfinkel's legacy (Ankara Linguistic Circle, 10.10.2008) (pdf)
3. What do we parse when we parse? (Bogazici Univ. Linguistics Colloq., 3.4.2008) (pdf)
4. Computationalism as a philosophy of science in cognitive science. (METU Philosophy and Cognition Workshop, 8.3.2008) ( pdf)
5. Turkce'de Ezgi: Sozdizim ve edimle Iliskisi (Turkish Intonation: Its relations to syntax and pragmatics-- with Umut Ozge and Asli Goksel). Mersin XXI. Dilbilim Kurultayi, 10 Mayis 2007)
6. Dil ne degildir? (What language is not) (Abant Izzet Baysal Universitesi, Psikoloji, 23.3.2007)
7. Type-dependence of Language (Ankara Linguistic Circle, March 2007)
8. Two notions of category in linguistics: Some (really naive) Algebra (METU Applied Mathematics Colloq. March 2007)
9. Lexical Integrity and Lexical Organisation (CL and Phonology Colloquium, Saarbrücken, 19.1.2006)
10. Language from the lexicon (Cognitive Science Colloquium, METU Ankara, 21.10.2005)
11. Kultur oncesi Dil: Niye cocuklarin bazi 'yanlislari' baska bir dilde 'dogru' cikiyor, bazi 'yanlislari' da hic yapmiyorlar? (Gercek Seminerleri, Ankara 8.12.2004) (duyuru | sunum)
12. Zihinsel Sozlukte Dilbilgisi (Hacettepe Dilbilim, Ankara, 5.11.2004) (ps)
13. What's in a Lexicon ? (METU CS Colloq., March 2004) (pdf)
14. Control and Grammatical Relations (Paris, Octobre 2003) (pdf, some material outdated, see Ed'04)
15. Lexical Origins of Word Order and Word Order Flexibility (Edinburgh Linguistic Circle, February 2003/Antwerp Typology Sem. March 2003) (pdf)
16. Inflectional Morphology as Syntax (Edinburgh ICCS/HCRC, Octobre 2002) (pdf, similar in material to METU CS'04)
17. (Yapay) Zeka ve Dil (ODTU, 9.11.2001) (doc)

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