If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Turkish language and culture, I would start with the analysis of remaining influences of Arabic and Persian vocabulary on Modern Turkish I am curious to analyze how much of Turkish culture is actually Turkish, since there had to have been many empirical influences from the Ottoman Empire and other outside influences such as language development. My reasoning for this research is that Ottoman Turkish vocabulary included many Arabic and Persian words along with traces of grammatical influence. Since Modern Turkish is still being "developed" and still growing in vocabulary and concepts, studying the linguistic growth of Modern Turkish would be extremely interesting to analyze. English is becoming a growing influence on Turkish language, which might also make cultural influences on Turkish culture. I would like to analyze the remaining Arabic and Persian influences on Modern Turkish and how these linguistic influences have affected the development of Turkish cultural practices. The main tasks of the language reform in 1932 was to replace the Arabic and Persian loanwords with newly derived words from Turkic roots or with Old Turkish words, that have not been used in centuries.
Although I have zero knowledge of Arabic and Persian, I think it would be very interesting to analyze their morphemes and how their morphology might have contributed and adapted into Ottoman Turkish, even possibly Modern Turkish. Also I would like to analyze how the Turkish Language Association (TDK) decided on the "Turkish equivalents" for replacements of Arabic and Persian loanwords. Being able to identify words of Arabic/Persian origin that still are being used today would be very interesting to analyze, along with the newly derived TDK words words that are being used alongside with them.
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