Dr David Gyorfi
About
Biography
I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the Surrey Morphology Group. I am currently working on a project entitled 'Analogical growth of grammatical systems', funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the University of Surrey. The project focuses on auxiliary verbs and similar construction across the world's languages. As a specialist in Turkic languages, my main field of research concerns the old and modern varieties of languages such as Turkish, Kazakh, Uzbeg and Tatar.
Areas of specialism
My qualifications
Previous roles
ResearchResearch interests
My main areas of interest are
- Turkic language
- Verbal system
- Auxiliary verb constructions
- Tense-aspect-modality expressions
- Language evolution
Research projects
As languages change over time, the subsystems within change as well. This project focuses on co-headed verbs (e.g. auxiliaries) and the systematic change they go through in languages that have a strikingly large and complex co-headed verb system. We use synchronic and diachronic data from languages around the world to build a novel typology of co-headed verb systems and to describe their evolution. The key objective is to verify to what extent analogy explains the extensive growth of grammatical systems.
Research interests
My main areas of interest are
- Turkic language
- Verbal system
- Auxiliary verb constructions
- Tense-aspect-modality expressions
- Language evolution
Research projects
As languages change over time, the subsystems within change as well. This project focuses on co-headed verbs (e.g. auxiliaries) and the systematic change they go through in languages that have a strikingly large and complex co-headed verb system. We use synchronic and diachronic data from languages around the world to build a novel typology of co-headed verb systems and to describe their evolution. The key objective is to verify to what extent analogy explains the extensive growth of grammatical systems.
Publications
(2022). Auxiliary Verb Constructions in Modern Spoken Kazakh. University of Surrey (PhD Thesis). https://doi.org/10.15126/thesis.900398
(2020). Challenges in Kazakh Auxiliary Selection. In S. Müller & A. Holler (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Head- Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Online (Berlin/Seatlle) (pp. 68–87). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publication. Retrieved from http://web.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/HPSG/2020/
(2014b). Khwarezmian: Mapping the Kipchak component of Pre-Chagatai Turkic. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung., 67(4), 383–406. https://doi.org/10.1556/AOrient.67.2014.4.1
(2014a). Awyzeki Soileuw Tilindegi Zhat Elementter (Qazaq Tili Bojyinsha) [Foreign Elements in Vernacular (in Kazakh)]. In Dayjdzhest Pedagogicheskih Novaciy [Digest of Pedagogic Novations] (pp. 265–268). Almaty: Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.
(2012). Nesimi - Azerbaijan’s Mystical Poet. In Azerbaijan - The Way Young Hungarians See It (pp. 117–125). Budapest: Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Hungary.