The Verb in Turkish

288 Pages·2002·1.37 MB·English

by  Eser Erguvanli Taylan

<ATSKSWVIUIDUEOZTIBYDOTEFLJWFHTECESHHCOOIEN"ETTRRTFI"DhG1O"""e5SLH4"0i"nTV">"g"eur"bi2s2ti0ikn"ATkutrukeilslh/L"inguisticsToday,Volume44"
TheVerbinTurkish
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original
monograph studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA
confrontempiricalandtheoreticalproblemsasthesearecurrentlydiscussedin
syntax,semantics,morphology,phonology,andsystematicpragmaticswiththe
aim to establish robust empirical generalizations within a universalistic
perspective.
SeriesEditor
WernerAbraham
UniversityofCaliforniaatBerkeley
UniversityofVienna
RijksuniversiteitGroningen
AdvisoryEditorialBoard
GuglielmoCinque(UniversityofVenice)
GüntherGrewendorf(J.W.Goethe-University,Frankfurt)
LilianeHaegeman(UniversityofLille,France)
HubertHaider(UniversityofSalzburg)
ChristerPlatzack(UniversityofLund)
IanRoberts(UniversityofStuttgart)
KenSafir(RutgersUniversity,NewBrunswickNJ)
LisadeMenaTravis(McGillUniversity)
StenVikner(UniversityofAarhus)
C.Jan-WouterZwart(UniversityofGroningen)
Volume44
TheVerbinTurkish
EditedbyEserErguvanlıTaylan
The Verb in Turkish
Edited by
Eser Erguvanlı Taylan
Bog˘aziçiUniversity
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCompany
Amsterdam(cid:1)/(cid:1)Philadelphia
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TheVerbinTurkish /editedbyEserErguvanlıTaylan.
p. cm.(LinguistikAktuell/LinguisticsToday,issn0166–0829;v.44)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Turkishlanguage--Verb.I.Taylan,EserErguvanlı.II.Linguistikaktuell;Bd.44.
PL161.V47 2001
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<ATSKSWV<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"<"ggiissccssttnnkkoooonntssIUInnTUEaaoOeecciiiiooZoozzzzaaiiTI""nnyyhhzztt""cBYRRRRRRRRRRRR/AssttD>>kkkkrrTEFrr>>""""L"""""""""""JW""////////////""ooR>>>>F>>>>>H>>>>T>>EET>>>>""SGHHC>>RRRRRRRRRRRROOEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"ETATRRTTIEEEEEEEEEEEE"RDaG1"Gb""FFFFFFFFFFFF5SLH"4"FFFFFFFFFFFFl0tEei"onT">T"cg"o"u"fi2sD2cti0Ook"nCtAeINnkttFsuO"ell/LinguisticsToday,Volume44"
Table of contents
Introduction vii
EserErguvanlıTaylan
FiniteinflectioninTurkish 1
EnginSezer
Anoteonmood,modality,tenseandaspectaffixesinTurkish 47
GuglielmoCinque
Periphrastictense/aspect/mood 61
GerjanvanSchaaik
Ontherelationbetweentemporal/aspectualadverbsandtheverb
forminTurkish 97
EserErguvanlıTaylan
Thereferentialpropertiesoftheimplicitargumentsofimpersonal
passiveconstructions 129
MineNakipog˘lu-Demiralp
Theauxiliaryverbolatthemorphology–syntaxinterface 151
AslıGöksel
FunctionalprojectionsandtheirsubjectsinTurkishclauses 183
JaklinKornfilt
On‘small’clauses,other‘bare’verbalcomplementsandfeature
checkinginTurkish 213
A.SumruÖzsoy
Turkishasanon-pro-droplanguage 239
BalkızÖztürk
Nameindex 261
Subjectindex 265

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Introduction
EserErguvanlıTaylan
Bog˘aziçiUniversity
WorkdoneontheTurkishlanguagebylinguistscanbetracedbacktonotmore
thanhalfacenturyago,thoughnaturallythelanguagehasbeenstudiedinthe
discipline of Turcology for a much longer period of time. Whilst the first
TurkishgrammaroftheTurkishspokeninAnatoliadatesbacktothesixteenth
century and the first Turkish grammar written by a European to the seven-
teenth century (Dilaçar 1970, 1971), Robert Lees’s The phonology of Modern
StandardTurkish(1961)isprobablytheearliestmajorworkonTurkishinthe
theoreticallinguisticstradition.1SincethispioneeringcontributionofLeesto
Turkish as well as to the generative framework in which it was written, the
numberoflinguistsdoingresearchonTurkishinvaryingtheoreticalviewpoints
hasincreasedtremendouslyovertheyears.TheTurkishlanguagewithmostof
its morphophonemic alternations governed by vowel or consonant harmony
rules,agglutinativemorphology,verbfinalwordorderthatpermitsvariation
according to semantic and pragmatic principles, nominalized subordinate
clause structures and pro-drop properties, among others, have provided
descriptiveaswellastheoreticallinguistswithnumerousinterestingproblems,
oftenopentomultipleanalyses.
Thepresentvolumebringstogetherthemostrecentresearchdoneonthe
clause structure of Turkish, the morpho-syntax of which is determined to a
greatextentbythepivotalroleoftheverb,asthelexicalcategorythatcanhost
aseriesofgrammaticalmorphemes,aswellastheassignerofcasetoitsargu-
ments. Any work on Turkish clause structure will, then, necessarily have to
involve some analysis of the verb form either from a morpho-syntactic or
semanticpointofview.Infact,itwill,probably,benotfar-fetchedtostatethat
inanylanguageitistheverbthatconstitutesthebackboneofsentencestructure
viii Introduction
andhenceitscoreelement,atthesametimebeingthesourceofdifferenttypes
andlevelsofinformation.
Theverb,asalexicalcategory,isoneofthetwocategoriesthatareaccepted
to be universal; only well-definable noun and verb categories have been
observed to exist in all languages of the world (Schachter 1985). Since early
times in the history of linguistic thought this category has been the target of
investigationandanalysis,particularlywithrespecttoitsmorphologicalmake-
upandsemanticexpression.Theverybasicsemanticclassificationofverbsinto
activity, state and process can be traced back to Aristotle (Binnick 1991).
Regularity vs. irregularity/anomaly in the verbal conjugation paradigms has
been one of the major issues of linguistic investigation throughout centuries
(Harris and Taylor 1997). In the twentieth century with the shift of focus in
grammaticaldescriptiontosyntax,clausestructurewheretheverbisthehead
of VP has received special attention from both functional and generative
linguists.
Thepresentvolume,theseedsofwhichwereplantedinthepaperspresent-
edataworkshopheldatBog˘aziçiUniversityinMay1999,containschapterson
the major above-mentioned facets of the verb, each of which presents new
reseachonacertainaspectoftheclausalstructureofTurkish.2AlthoughAyhan
Aksu-Koçhasnotcontributedapapertothisvolume,herpresentationonthe
acquisitionofevidentialsinTurkishandheractiveparticipationinthework-
shopsurelyhaveaspecialplaceintheprocessthathasleadtotherealizationof
thiswork.Thespectrumofpapersinthiscollectionisbasedonanalysescarried
outinanumberoftheoreticalorientationsrangingfromPerlmutter’sUnaccu-
sativeHypothesistoChomsky’sMinimalistProgram.Thus,thecollectioncan
be said to be a sound reflection of the current state of reseach in Turkish
linguistics.Forthetheoreticallinguisttherichbodyofdatafurnishedbyeach
chaptertoillustrateasclearlyaspossibletheprinciplesclaimedtooperate,will
be of great use in evaluating how adequately the particular theory can acco-
modatethedescribedfactsofTurkish,alanguagetypologicallyverydifferent
than any Indo-European language. Furthermore, such linguistic studies on
diverselanguageswillplayasignificantroleinvalidatingtheuniversalityofthe
theoriesemployed.Itis,then,apparentthatthetypeanddepthofinformation
tobefoundinthestudiesincludedinthisvolumewillnotfallintothedomain
oflanguagedescriptionprovidedbytraditionalgrammarsofTurkish.
Some of the topics inquired into in this collection have given way to
challanging new analyses while others shed light on unexplored aspects of
Turkishmorpho-syntaxanditssemanticinterpretation.Forinstance,Öztürk’s
Introduction ix
analysis of Turkish as a non-pro-drop language, Göksel’s treatment of the
asymmetryinthemorpho-syntaxoftheauxiliaryol-andthereformulationof
the inflectional domain, or Cinque’s account of the ordering of the Turkish
verbal affixes as being predictable by the universal hierarchy of functional
projectionsheproposes,introducetotallynewanglesofanalysis.Otherpapers,
thatmayappeartobedealingwithtopicswearemorefamiliarwith,allreflect
freshinsightswiththeoreticalsignificance,suchas,Kornfilt’ssolutiontohandle
the differences in the morphological marking of the subjects of non-finite
argumentandadjunctclauses,Sezer’sapproachtothecooccurrencerestrictions
on verbal affixation in terms of the feature theory or Nakipoglu’s analysis of
splitintransitives.Özsoy’scontribution,whichpresentstheproblemsinearlier
accountsofawell-knownsyntacticconstructionofTurkishinthelightofnew
data, points to serious limitations in the current generative theory of syntax.
IssuesaddressedinthepaperbyErguvanlı-Taylanleadusintoanewterritory
where the dependency relations uncovered to hold between certain types of
adverbs,polarityandverbformhaveadeterminingroleintheoverallaspectual
interpretation of the sentence. Similarly, the properties of periphrastic con-
structionsdiscussedinvanSchaaik’spresentationisprobablythemostin-depth
treatmentofsuchconstructionsand,nodoubt,thefirstoneinthefunctional
grammarmodel.
Thepapersinthisvolumecanbesaidtoclusteraroundtwomainheadings:
a)propertiesofverbalinflection:analysisofverbalaffixesasthemorphological
meanstoexpresstemporal,aspectualandmodalnotions,andb)propertiesof
verbform:implicationsofspecificmorphologicalconfigurationsforsyntactic
theory.Sincecertainverbalaffixesthatexpresstemporal,aspectualandmodal
notionsareillustratedtoplayasignificantroleinthedistributionofintransi-
tivesinimpersonalpassiveconstructions,thepaperlookingintothesemantic
propertiesofintransitiveverbsintryingtoaccountfortheirdifferingbehavior
inpassiveconstructionshasbeenincludedinthefirstgroup.
Propertiesofverbalinflection
TheagglutinativemorphologicaltypologyofTurkishisprobablybestexempli-
fied on the verb form, with the verb stem being able to host voice (namely
passive, causative,reflexive and reciprocal),polarity, mood,aspect, tenseand
agreementmorphemes,roughlyinthissequence.Thefactthattheverbpermits
numerous derivational and inflectional morphemes to be strung together