Structural consequences of language shift: Judeo -Spanish in Istanbul

After evaluating a series of sociolinguistic interviews and translation exercises conducted among the Spanish-speaking Sephardic community in Istanbul, Turkey, I examine the morphological and syntactic changes present across several generations of informants (ages 19-95). The structures that were analyzed included gender agreement, number agreement, adjective placement within the noun phrase, subject-verb agreement, and subjunctive usage in subordinate clauses. My results indicate that the younger generation exhibits the greatest amount of structural change in that they no longer produce agreement or introduce other linguistic structures not present in the Judeo-Spanish of the older generation. I identify the origins of these structural changes as either inherent to Spanish or based on unbalanced bilingualism with Turkish, the dominant language. Furthermore, I analyze the current sociolinguistic status of Judeo-Spanish in Istanbul, focusing on its linguistic domains, preservation, and intergenerational transmission