On Single Argument Verbs in Turkish
Abstract
The article discusses how split intransitivity phenomenon is observed
in Turkish in terms of aspectual notions such as agentivity and telicity;
different grammatical constructions such as impersonal passives and
adjectival passives, and derivational morphology. It observes that
agentivity is the key factor affecting split intransitivity in Turkish
alongside telicity and these determine the unaccusative-unergative
distinction of verbs of manner of motion, verbs of emission and
reflexive verbs in Turkish. The article proposes that verbs of emission
seem to be unaccusative while reflexives behave more like unergatives.
Our findings imply that variable behavior of intransitive verbs can be
handled under an event structure analysis where different functional
heads give theta role to a NP merged in their domain. Thus, there
is no need for a lexical derivation or rule for accounting the facts on
unaccusativity.
Keywords
References
- Acartürk, Cengiz (2005). Gradient Characteristics of the Unaccusative/Unergative Distinction in Turkish: An Experimental Investigation. M.A. Thesis. Ankara: METU.
- Acartürk, Cengiz and Deniz Zeyrek (2010). “Unaccusative/Unergative Distinction in Turkish: A Connectionist Approach.” Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Asian Language Resources. 111-119.
- Burzio, Luigi (1986). Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht: Reidel.
- Dowty, David (1991). “Thematic Proto-roles and Argument Selection.” Language 67: 547- 619.
- Göksel, Aslı and Celia Kerslake (2005). Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge.
- Gürer, Aslı et. al. (2012). “Dil Cambazı ve Türkçede Geçişsiz Eylemler”. 26. Ulusal Dilbilim Kurultayı. Isparta: Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi.
- Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport (1995). Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
- Nakipoğlu-Demiralp, Mine (1998). Split Intransitivity and the Syntax-Semantics Interface In Turkish. Ph.D. Dissertation. Minnesota: University of Minnesota.
Details
Primary Language
English
Subjects
-
Journal Section
Research Article
Publication Date
July 30, 2018
Submission Date
December 17, 2014
Acceptance Date
May 7, 2015
Published in Issue
Year 2018 Number: 86