Puzzles in Turki(c)/(sh)

Through studies of verb doubling in a regional variety of Turkish and plural possession in Turkish and Sakha, I show how the same meanings can be built through distinct underlying grammatical processes, sometimes realized by clearly different forms and sometimes by forms that look strikingly similar. More broadly, by drawing on data from understudied languages and dialects, this work demonstrates that grammatical variation is not random, but systematically shaped by deeper organizational principles of human language.