Ph.D. Theses
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Browsing Ph.D. Theses by Author "Özsoy, A. Sumru."
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Item Case as an uninterpretable feature(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in teh Social Sciences, 2006., 2006.) Kechriotis, Zekiye Ceyda Arslan.; Özsoy, A. Sumru.The aim of this dissertation is to discuss the syntactic properties of nominals in Turkish, their Case properties and the implications of a theory of grammar in which the dislocation of arguments is not motivated by the Extended Projection Principle (EPP), but by structural Case checking. It is proposed that Turkish referential nominals possess a Determiner Phrase (DP) layer where Dº assigns referentiality to the nominal. DP in turn is argued to select a Number Phrase (NumP)/Classifer Phrase (ClP) both subcategorizing for an NP. Non-referential nominals are argued to be bare NPs without the functional categories that referential nominals bear, which accounts for the fact that they behave in a different manner than DPs. It is argued that DPs undergo dislocation from their basegenerated positions to Spec positions of higher functional heads with which they form a A- Agree relation, whereas NPs remain in their merge positions. Moreover, NPs and DPs are also argued to behave differently in their Case properties. NPs bear weak Case feature and they undergo adhesion to the verb to be licensed; whereas DPs bear strong Case feature. It is argued that the analysis where dislocation is motivated by the EPP feature of the functional heads faces several economy problems. This study claims that it is the strong Case feature of nominals which forces them to undergo dislocation.Item Resumption, A’- chains and implications on clausal architecture(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2010., 2010.) Meral, Hasan Mesud.; Özsoy, A. Sumru.This work investigates the nature of resumption and provides an analysis of how anaphoric dependencies occur in language. I raise the question whether resumption has any explanatory power on various grammatical phenomena such as binding, control and null object licensing which have been assumed in the generative literature as resulting from different licensing mechanisms and require different grammatical operations. In this respect, this study aims at extending the applicational domain of resumption from relative clauses to anaphor licensing, control and null object licensing. I claim that resumption offers a valid solution which compromises the different requirements of these different phenomena with respect to locality. The idea in the dissertation is that the anaphors, PROs and null objects behave in the same way with a resumptive in that they form a unit with their syntactic antecedents (empty operator), then they split. The antecedent binds the grammatical formative inside the clause respecting a different sense of locality. The dissertation also argues that the A- domain in Turkish is weak due to the problematic nature of A- domain operations. Instead, what Turkish instantiates is a rich A’- domain where different grammatical phenomena such as binding and control are licensed via operator-variable chains akin to resumption. For the problematic aspects of Binding Theory conditions and the lack of pronoun-anaphor complementarity, the dissertation argues that Turkish follows a threepartite system where a third category exemplified by a complex pronominal expression (kendi)si subsumes the functions of regular pronominals and anaphors and other functions which cannot be expressed by these two grammatical formatives.