Existential negation in Turkish: A functional approach

Yıl 2020, , 647 - 660, 24.06.2020

Muberra Seydi

https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.759267

Öz

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.

Anahtar Kelimeler

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

Kaynakça

• Ağca, F. (2015). Eski Türkçede Varlık ve Yokluk İşaretleyicileri. Dil Araştırmaları, 16: 83-101.
• Çakmak, S. (2013). “Var” ve “Yok” Sözcüklerinin Morfolojik Kimliği. Turkish Studies, 8/4: 463-471.
• Clauson, G. (1972). An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish. Oxford.
• Croft, W. (1991). The Evolution of Negation. Journal of Linguistics, 27: 1-39.
• Erdal, M. (1991). Old Turkic Word Formation. Leiden: Brill.
• Erdal, M. (2004). A Grammar of Old Turkic. Leiden: Brill.
• Erguvanlı,T. E. (1984). Some Aspects of Negation in Turkish. In Proceedings of the Turkish Linguistics Conference, Aksu-Koç, A. and E. Erguvanlı-Taylan (eds). İstanbul: Bogaziçi Publications.
• Hengeveld, K. (1992). Non-verbal Predicability. In Meaning and Grammar: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives, Michel Kefer & Johan van der Auwera (eds). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Erk Emeksiz, Z. (2010). Negation in Turkish. Dilbilim Araştırmaları. 2: 1-15.
• Horn, Laurance, R. (2001). A Natural History of Negation. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
• Kerslake, C. & Göksel, A. (2005). Turkish: A Comparative Grammar. London: Routledge.
• Krifka, M. (1995). The Semantics and Pragmatics of Polarity Items. Linguistic Analysis 25: 209-257.
• Krifka, M. (2007). Negated Antonyms: Creating and Filling the Gap. In Uli Sauerland and Penka Stateva (eds), Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics. Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition. Palgrave Macmillan: 163-177.
• Miestemo, M. (2007). Negation- An Overview of Typological Research. Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 552–570.
• Russel, B. (1903). The Principles of Mathematics. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
• Russel, B. (1905). On Denoting. Mind 14:479-93.
• Tekin, T. (2003). Orhon Türkçesi Grameri. İstanbul: Kitap Matbaası.
• Tekin, T. (2009). Orhon Yazıtları, Ankara: TDK.
• Tura, S. (1981). A study on negation in Turkish. Unpublished ms.
• Van Shaaik, G. (1994). Turkish. In kahrel Peter & René van der Berg (eds.). Typological Studies in Negation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 35-50.
• Veselinova, L. (2013). Negation in Existential Sentences: A Cross-Linguistic Study. In Delia Bentley, Francesco Maria Ciconte and Silvio Cruschina (eds.) [Special issue] Italian Journal of Linguistics 25 (1): 107–145.
• Veselinova, L. (2014). Negative Existential Cycle Revisited. Linguistics 52(6): 1327–1389.
• Van der Wouden, T. (1997). Negative Contexts: Collocation, polarity and multiple negation, London: Routledge.
• Zeijlstra, H. Hedde. (2002). What the Jespersen’s Cycle May Reveal about Negative Concord. Linguistics in Potsdam 19: 183-216.
• Zeijlstra, H., Hedde. (2004a). Two Ways of Expressing Negation, Proceeding of ConSOLE 12: 245-259.
• Zeijlstra, H., Hedde. (2004b). Sentential Negation and Negative Concord, Netherlands: LOT.