Onur Özsoy

Dr. Onur Özsoy is a researcher and substitute professor in linguistics at Universität zu Köln and Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin. His work focuses on multilingualism, heritage languages, and morphosyntax in Turkish and other languages. He holds a PhD from Humboldt-Universität (2024) and has held postdoctoral positions in BMBF-funded projects on multilingual language abilities. His research explores aspect systems, nominal reference, and language acquisition dynamics in heritage communities.

Education: PhD in Linguistics (2024, Humboldt-Universität), M.Ed. in Geography and English (2021), BA in Geography and English (2019). Exchange studies at University of Birmingham.

Research Interests:

• Language production/comprehension in heritage speakers
• Grammatical aspect and anaphora systems
• Multilingual language development
• Bilingual education pedagogy

Recent Work: Co-organized DGfS workshop on heritage language learning (2025), published studies on heritage Greek/Russian/Turkish aspects (2024), and language comprehension in Down syndrome (CogSci 2024). Active in public outreach through ZAS events like 'Wie geht Mehrsprachigkeit?'

Awards: 1st place in 'Alexander und ich' exhibition (2019).

Advising: Served on doctoral committee for Daniela Palleschi (HU Berlin) and acted as ZAS PhD representative since 2019. Previously advised Heritage Language education curricula in multilingual contexts.

Labs/Tech: Core member of 'Emerging Grammars in Language Contact' research unit (ZAS), collaborator in CRC 1252 'Prominence in Language' (Uni Köln).