This study aims at exploring the extent of Iranian influence on East Anatolian Turkish (EAT) word order. Iranian and Turkic varieties have been in intensive contact as neighboring languages for nearly a thousand years. In a vast linguistic area-Arexes-Iran linguistic area- stretching from the Central Asia to the Caucases and central Anatolia, a great number of languages have been scrutinized with regard to their shared contact-induced mechanisms. Little attention, however, has been paid to the degree of Iranian influence on the syntactic features of EAT despite located in the same region.

Although Iranian influence can be observed in different degrees in the entire EAT, most intensively influenced language areas are the Southeastern Anatolia and the southern borders of the Eastern Anatolia where bilingual speaker population is high. Thus, this paper zooms in on the Iranian-induced word order features of EAT based on the spoken data collected from the cities Diyarbakır, Elâzığ, Tunceli, Van, and Bitlis. The findings reveal that the Iranian influence on EAT’s post-verbal word order exerts itself on four syntactic domains: dative elements expreesing direction and purpose, direct objects of verb of saying and perception, adverbial clauses, and modal structures. These contact-induced innovations appear to be triggered by modal Iranian codes spoken in the vicinity, i.e., Persian, Kurmanji, and Zazaki.  In all sections, the evaluations are supported with the relevant equivalent examples from possible contact languages.

This study aims at exploring the extent of Iranian influence on East Anatolian Turkish (EAT) word order. Iranian and Turkic varieties have been in intensive contact as neighboring languages for nearly a thousand years. In a vast linguistic area-Arexes-Iran linguistic area- stretching from the Central Asia to the Caucases and central Anatolia, a great number of languages have been scrutinized with regard to their shared contact-induced mechanisms. Little attention, however, has been paid to the degree of Iranian influence on the syntactic features of EAT despite located in the same region.

Although Iranian influence can be observed in different degrees in the entire EAT, most intensively influenced language areas are the Southeastern Anatolia and the southern borders of the Eastern Anatolia where bilingual speaker population is high. Thus, this paper zooms in on the Iranian-induced word order features of EAT based on the spoken data collected from the cities Diyarbakır, Elâzığ, Tunceli, Van, and Bitlis. The findings reveal that the Iranian influence on EAT’s post-verbal word order exerts itself on four syntactic domains: dative elements expreesing direction and purpose, direct objects of verb of saying and perception, adverbial clauses, and modal structures. These contact-induced innovations appear to be triggered by modal Iranian codes spoken in the vicinity, i.e., Persian, Kurmanji, and Zazaki.  In all sections, the evaluations are supported with the relevant equivalent examples from possible contact languages.