Existential negation in Turkish: A functional approach

Abstract

Existential negation is the one type of negation present in languages, which its item is called “negative existential”, and it provides to tell the case of “absence”, “lack”, “there is not”, “poor”, “empty”, “dead” etc. Negative existentials are generally used for the common similarity of a structure as morphological, syntactic and semantic typologies. In Turkish, existential negation occurs with the independent morpheme yok, which is defined as “absolute absence/non-existence”. Yok is the main negative existential that is different from the standard negation and it is a separate lexical item with negative content. Since it is a powerful negator with its “absolute absence/non-existence” meaning, it can be used in different positions, such as existential negation, possessive negation, emphatic negation, standard negation, short answer “no”, prohibition or double negation. In addition to yok, the bound morpheme -sXz is used with “without/lack” meaning in existential negation by implying the non-existence case. Besides, general rejection item değil, which means “is not”, is used in existential negation, which implies the non-existentiality by rejecting the existence case that is presupposed.

Keywords

• existential negation; turkish negative existentials; yok; -sXz; değil.

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