M.A. Theses

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De Re De dicto ambiguities in Turkish : disambiguation by LLMs and processing by humans
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Marşan, Büşra.; Atlamaz, Ümit.; Demirok, Ömer Faruk.
This study aims to investigate De Re De Dicto ambiguities in Turkish from different points of views: Formal semantics, computational linguistics and psycholinguistics. From the formal semantics perspective, a survey of different accounts that aim to explain compositional semantics of De Re De Dicto ambiguities is provided. With free word order and optionally non-overt accusative marker interacting with information structure, Turkish poses an interesting case for De Re De Dicto ambiguities as their resolution is closely tied to many factors: Discourse and non-discourse elements in the conversational context, information structure, world knowledge, and belief states of the utterer. From the computational linguistics perspective, a challenge data set in Turkish for natural language inference (NLI) is offered to test swiftly growing large language models’ (LLMs) abilities in recognizing syntactic and morphological cues along with the world knowledge. For this purpose, a seed data of 743 sentence triplets were manually created and annotated by native speakers: One potentially De Re De Dicto ambiguous sentence, one De Re paraphrase and one De Dicto paraphrase. Then this seed data was augmented using a natural language augmentation algorithm specifically created for this task. An experiment was conducted to assess probing abilities of CNLI-TR and compare it with NLI-TR, the only other available NLI data set for Turkish. From the psycholinguistics perspective, a self-paced reading experiment was conducted to investigate whether theoretical claims that De Re is "harder" to compositionally derive hold from a sentence processing perspective. Following disambiguating contexts, participants were shown De Re De Dicto ambiguous sentences and were asked comprehension questions targeting specific readings parallel to disambiguating contexts. Reading time of De Re De Dicto ambiguous sentences and response time of comprehension questions were compared across disambiguating contexts to explore whether there was a significant and credible processing difference.
Genitive case in Turkish
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Kuzgun, Aslı.; Atlamaz, Ümit.
This thesis explores the syntactic contexts with a genitive case in Turkish. The genitive case in Turkish occurs with the pronominal complements of a set of postpositions, on possessors and the subjects of embedded clauses. The genitive case with postpositions differs from the genitive case in other positions and is identified as a lexical case due to being idiosyncratic. The distinctive allomorphy patterns of the lexical genitive case presented in this thesis point to a further division between the two contexts. Considering the syntactic and behavioral differences between the lexical and the structural genitive case, it is claimed that the genitive case with postpositions is a different case from the genitive case in other positions. The genitive case on possessors and the subjects of embedded clauses are analyzed as an unmarked case in Turkish. It is argued that the structural genitive case can only occur at Spec, DP. Following this argument, the subject case alternation in the embedded clauses is discussed. It is observed that the embedded clauses occur with nominative subjects when they combine with certain postpositions. Building on this observation, it is suggested that the embedded clauses are headed by Ds, which differ in their phrasal properties, and that the postpositions select the type of D they combine with. Overall, this thesis defines two kinds of genitive cases in Turkish and discusses the morphosyntactic conditions for realizing each.
Squatitive negation in Turkish
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Dalmaz, Ege Baran.; Akar, Didar.
This thesis examines the squatitive negation forms (Horn, 2001) in Turkish in order to provide a linguistic description and an explanation of their discourse functions. Squatitives are negation forms that are non-canonical with distinctive interactional properties. Turkish has three grammatical negation forms: i. substantive predicate ‘değil’, ii. verbal suffix ‘/-mA/’, iii. existential predicate ‘yok’. Given the existence of these exhaustively productive negation forms, why there is a need for another form of negation is a question that has to be discussed. The answer lies in the interactional nature of language. Squatitive negation forms typically include a taboo or swear word such as nah and b*k inserted into a sentence and this taboo word changes the polarity of the sentence. Structurally, squatitives display certain constraints: i. they cannot be embedded, ii. they cannot occur in questions, and iii. they cannot license NPIs, which raises questions about their status as polarity items.Interactionally, squatitives require an antecedent utterance (usually by another speaker) which they repeat and change its polarity. While doing that, they function to display the speaker’s stance with purposes such as challenging or refuting the interlocutor’s preceding utterance. Following Berman’s (2005) discourse stance framework, I claim that squatitive forms most frequently mark attitude stance, in particular, affective stance based on 84 tokens collected from Turkish National Corpus and TS Corpus.
A nanosyntactic account of the Turkish copula and agreement paradigms
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Gök, Serra.; Demirok, Ömer Faruk.
Turkish displays a rich verbal domain which necessarily hosts a copula in certain contexts and where tense, aspect, mood/ modality markers and agreement allomorphies abound. In this thesis, I have attempted to delineate a fresh analysis for these two phenomena, namely, the appearance of the copula in verbal structures, especially in the context of tense and aspect markers and their combinations, and agreement allomorphies -focusing on the most significant k-z paradigms- using a Nanosyntactic toolset. Although these phenomena were probed in light of earlier theories like DM, Nanosyntax, which is a rather new approach, had not been used to evaluate the Turkish verbal domain in its integrity before. I also touched upon a related phenomenon in Turkish named "suspended affixation". Through that and the other phenomena mentioned earlier, it is shown here that Nanosyntax is perfectly capable of accounting for the most part of the rich verbal domain of Turkish thanks to several tools and mechanisms it offers. However, it also has yet to provide a holistic and satisfying answer to some questions built around the appearance of the copula in general by moving from word-level to phrase-level morphosyntax. I hope for this thesis to provide a base to accelerate the research towards that direction and to be of assistance to those who would like to work on Nanosyntax with a focus on Turkish morphosyntax.
Negation in Pazar Laz
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Cesur, Neslihan.; Bağrıaçık, Metin.
This thesis aims to give a detailed description of the four different negation particles in Pazar Laz which are va(r), vati, mot and moto. I demonstrate how the selection of the negator in matrix clauses is carried out according the tense and mood of the negated predicate. I show that while var is used to negate predicates in past and present tense in indicative mood, vati is used to negate sentences in future tense as well as to negate epistemic readings. The negator mot negates predicates in optative/hortative constructions and prohibitive mood. Finally, I argue that the negator moto should be considered a separate negation morpheme, considering that it has a distinct distribution from mot and behaves differently from all other negators with regard to affirmative preverbs. I also touch on certain negation asymmetries which cause structural differences between affirmative and negative sentences. I demonstrate three different subtypes of asymmetry for Pazar Laz: A/Cat/TAM, A/NonReal and A/Emph. Considering that Pazar Laz showcases counterarguments to the correlation between emphatic marking and negation, I argue that A/Emph asymmetry should not be categorized as a separate asymmetry subtype. I look into the distribution of the negators in non- finite and finite complement clauses. I draw attention to several unexpected patterns found in complement clauses. First of all, I show that contrary to what has been shown in matrix clauses, the negator var can be used to negate future tense. Moreover, both var and vati can co-occur with the modality marker -ere. I also show that contrary to what has been claimed before, the placement of the negators with respect to the subordinator na is much more flexible.
A paradigm gap in Turkish
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) İleri, Muhammed.; Demirok, Ömer Faruk.
In this thesis, I report a paradigm gap in the agreement paradigm of desiderative constructions formed with the suffix -(y)AsI in Turkish. I argue that 3PL agreeing desiderative verbs are defective by providing empirical evidence from an acceptability judgment experiment (N = 181) and corpus frequencies. To explain the existence of the gap, I first provide an analogy- based account which states that base identification procedure within the paradigm fails to reliably select a base for producing the 3PL desiderative form. That is, I argue that there is a competition between two surface forms that are both attested in speaker productions due to indeterminacy of base identification. Then, I provide an alternative account that can explain the gap in the framework of Distributed Morphology. Comparing these two accounts, I argue that the analogy-based account is better suited than a Distributed Morphology account to explain the gap in the light of the empirical findings. Besides the desiderative gap, I also discuss other gaps in the paradigm of associative plural constructions in Turkish that require different analyses. Using the tools of Distributed Morphology in this case, I argue that these gaps can be best explained with a combination of a local dislocation operation and a ban on the adjacency of two plural features. Considering the different kind of gaps reported for Turkish throughout the thesis, I suggest that our morphological models should allow for both probabilistic and deterministic generalizations.
Turkish as a heritage language : diachronic change and synchronic variation of Turkish in the United Kingdom
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Sanıyar, Ezgi.; Bağrıaçık, Metin.; Atlamaz, Ümit.
In this study, I investigate certain morpho-syntactic changes emerging in Turkish spoken as a heritage language in the United Kingdom. I mainly focus on object pronoun use and the use of the plural marker -lAr both on verbs and nouns in this variety, based on data collected from members of the Turkish community in the United Kingdom. First, I show that Turkish heritage speakers tend not to omit direct objects even in environments in which they are judged redundant or optional by the baseline speakers, native speakers of Turkish in Turkey. Second, I reveal that heritage speakers of Turkish prefer plural marking on nouns even when the latter are modified by quantifiers and numerals - configurations that are judged in the literature as ungrammatical in Standard Modern Turkish. Third, I present that the same speakers use -lAr as third person plural marker in their natural speech more than the baseline speakers, overriding certain strong tendencies in Standard Modern Turkish, such as a tendency to omit -lAr when the controller is a nonhuman or inanimate plural subject. I claim that these differences cannot be wholesale attributed to one or the other mechanisms of change. Instead, I argue that there are different motivating factors for these changes, which are mainly the dominant language transfer effect, silence and distance problems in binding, complex structure avoidance, and the tendency to adopt a more regularized and analytic structure.
Turkish indefinites : scope and specificity
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2022., 2022) Baykuş, Ecem.; Guerzoni, Elena.
Turkish indefinites in object position are expressed in two ways: one is marked with the accusative case, and the other one is non-marked. Interestingly, there is a sharp contrast between these two indefinites. Accusative marked indefinites in the object position show ambiguity between specific and non- specific interpretations whereas non-marked indefinites have only a non-specific interpretation. This thesis aims to develop a critical perspective on the semantic and syntactic differences between these two types of indefinites in Turkish. Although Enç (1991), Kelepir (2001), Öztürk (2005) and Özge (2010) present their proposals on the behavior of accusative marked and non-marked indefinites, these proposals are insufficient to fully account for the indefinites behavior. This thesis aims to give a unified and semantic oriented investigation on Turkish indefinites by delving into the missing points in earlier works. Firstly, this thesis will look at the behavior of indefinites in extensional contexts and clarify the contrast between accusative marked and non-marked indefinites in these contexts. Secondly, the thesis will analyze the interaction of indefinites with intensional operators. Fodor (1970) claims that a specific and a non- specific reading that indefinites receive are derived separately from a de re and a de dicto reading. Therefore, an indefinite receives four different readings when it scopes below an intentional operator in the surface structure. In conclusion, this thesis will go over the proposals on indefinites and provide a critical perspective on them by looking at Turkish examples.
Multinomial processing tree models of recent accounts of the processing of noncanonical word order sentences
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Çavuşoğlu, Kasım Burak.; Logacev, Pavel.
This study investigates the predictions of the retrieval and the parsing accounts of the processing of noncanonical word order sentences by implementing their suggestions in multinomial processing tree (MPT) models (Riefer & Batchelder, 1988). MPT models allow the estimation of probabilities of unobservable and hypothesized cognitive events or states using categorical data, and an analysis of the predictions and the technical properties of these models can provide information as to how accounts of cognitive processes can be improved. Recent literature has identified systematic performance decrease in the agent/patient naming task, among other types of experimental tasks, when comprehenders were faced with noncanonical word order sentences (Ferreira, 2003; Bader & Meng, 2018). The retrieval account (Bader & Meng, 2018; Meng & Bader, 2021), suggests that this decrease in performance is caused by problems with the cue-based retrieval operation triggered by the task probes, whereas the parsing account (Ferreira, 2003; Christianson, Luke & Ferreira, 2010) suggests that the decrease in performance is caused by misinterpretation. We developed multiple MPT models that reflect the assumptions of these two accounts and fitted these to the data from the first experiment of Meng and Bader (2021). We found that the retrieval account is more eligible for adaptation into an MPT structure than the parsing account, and that the parsing account needed deeper revision of its assumptions.
Turkish memes and their users :|indexicality and identity through language play
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Tunçer, Ümit Can.; Akar, Didar.
Internet memes have been a considerable point of interest to their users ever since their widespread recognition on social media channels. These digital items often come in different shapes and formats, varying from simple texts accompanying images to complex video edits and audiovisual tokens. Recently, memes have started to appear in linguistics studies (George, 2020; Vasquez and Aslan, 2021, Yus, 2020) where their text-over-image properties proved to be significant in terms of indexicality and identity construction, language play, and the pragmatics of incongruity resolutions. This thesis aims to contribute to what has been discussed in the literature, with a selection of additional language play strategies observed in memes and Caps in Turkish social media. In addition to these language play strategies, an analysis utilizing the Indexicality Framework (Eckert, 2008; Silverstein, 2003) was used to demonstrate the complex meaning-making processes of memes, as well as the identity construction via the use of text and imagery. The second part of this thesis involves a practice-oriented approach to the communities that make and consume memes on social media. For this part, the Community of Practice framework (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1999; Meyerhoff and Strycharz, 2013; Wenger, 1998) was utilized to demonstrate how certain affordances of social media channels allow for different practices that form within the meme communities. Furthermore, the member practices were shown to demonstrate the membership and identity construction within the meme communities.
Lexical effects in morpho-orthographic segmentation
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Kellum, Allyson Lee.; Logacev, Pavel.
The present study investigated how native English speakers process morphologically complex words and monomorphemic words. Pseudo-complex words have a whole word meaning, but also a possible decomposition into a stem and suffix, which means that they may be processed more similarly to monomorphemic words due to the whole-word meaning or more similarly to morphologically complex words, as decomposition is possible. This study was carried out using a masked priming lexical decision task, and is unique in that it used the same target word in all experimental conditions and used only derivational suffixes. Results showed that pseudo-complex words were processed similar to monomorphemic words. Additionally, the base frequency effect was found, with higher-frequency target words being processed faster and showing fewer priming effects overall. Results were modeled with the additional measures of the sum of the word ending bigram frequencies, the possibility of an incorrect decomposition due to the presence of another suffix, and individual self-rated spelling ability. A clear segmentation and stronger spelling skills decreased reaction times. Overall, the results of the study support that pseudo complex words are processed more similarly to monomorphemic words, suggesting that no decomposition took place.
Applicatives in Ladino
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2021., 2021.) Dinç, Fatma Belgin.; Öztürk, Balkız.
This thesis explores how non-core arguments are licensed in Ladino/Judeo Espanyol (JE), a minority language spoken in Turkey by the Sephardic Jews. The language has been in contact with Turkish since the settlement of the Jewish immigrants coming from Spain by the end of the XVth century. We studied low applicative structures in JE with a focus on possessor applicatives. According to our findings, JE does not license the applied arguments below the verb phrase layer except for some frozen expressions, hence the structure is more in line with high applicatives. When the language codes possession or recipients through applicatives, it is restricted to animates therefore it includes also the semantics of affectedness. Another phenomenon observed in JE is that in possessor applicatives the possessor is marked with dative and genitive case interchangeably. In our view this might be a linguistic change towards the merging of dative and genitive case in JE.
Expression of arguments and age of acquisition effects in Turkish Sign Language
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2021., 2021.) Özdemir, Semra.; Gökgöz, Kadir.
This study explores how delayed exposure to Turkish Sign Language (TİD) affects the encoding of arguments on agreeing verbs, within an utterance, and in descriptions of multiple entities. The discussion on agreeing verbs hinges on the marking of referential loci that anchor arguments on person agreeing verbs (e.g. SHOW) and location agreeing verbs (e.g. FLY-TO). Location agreeing verbs are further examined to reveal patterns in the ordering of Figures (i.e. smaller, more mobile entities) and Grounds (i.e. larger, more immobile entities) within an utterance. Lastly, the expression of number information in noun phrases that introduce arguments during scene setting and verb phrases that describe events containing multiple entities are investigated. A series of elicitation tasks suggests the following: (i) late learners perform virtually on par with their native counterparts in terms of referent tracking, (ii) location agreement verbs elicit more faithful responses, in which referential loci are consistently cross-referenced on the verb, than person agreement verbs in both groups, (iii) native signers adhere more strictly to the Figure-Ground principle observed across sign languages, and (iv) late learners show a tendency to leave out number information on the verb when describing a single event with multiple entities. Taken together, these findings shed light on the critical period (Lenneberg, 1967) and offer insight into the components of language that are sensitive to the timing of language input.
Applicatives in Pomak
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Karakaş, Sercan.; Öztürk, Balkız.
This thesis aims at analyzing how non-core arguments are licensed in Pomak, a severely endangered language spoken in the Balkans, within the Generative Framework, focusing on ditranstive constructions, i.e. double object constructions, prepositional ditranstive constructions, and dative possessors. For the analysis of ditranstive constructions, we provide data from two dialects of Pomak, Şahin dialect spoken in Xanthi, Greece and Uzunköprü dialect spoken in Edirne, Turkey. The findings indicate that Uzunköprü dialect does not exhibit low applicative pattern in ditranstive constructions and instead, it shows the properties of prepositional ditranstive constructions based on binding, scopal relationship and weak cross-over effects unlike the Şahin dialect, which constructs ditranstive constructions via a low applicative head. The analysis of the possessor applicatives is restricted to Uzunköprü dialect and we show that applicative possession in Pomak cannot be analyzed, assuming that the applicative head is in the nominal domain proposed by Iovtcheva (2019) for the analysis of Bulgarian, which is the closest relative of Pomak. Finally, we show that unlike Cuervo (2003), possessor applicatives are constructed via a high applicative, which takes VP as its complement, or a higher applicative, which takes vP as its complement, the selection of which yields in a difference in meaning as a high applicative head contributes to the at-issue tier while higher applicative contributes to the not-at-issue tier.
Semantics of Turkish free conditionals
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2021., 2021.) Akpınar, Kadernur.; Guerzoni, Elena.
The aim of the present research is to provide a novel compositional semantic analysis for Turkish conditional sentences with wh-phrases in their antecedents (wh conditionals henceforth), which are ambiguous between question and free conditional readings, the latter being the term I use for what roughly corresponds to English sentences with wh-ever phrases. Demirok (2017) is the only existing analysis of free conditionals in Turkish, which builds on Rawlins (2013). I show that Demirok’s and Rawlins’s view, which assumes Hamblin’s (1973) semantics of wh phrases, overgenerates, thus I suggest an alternative to it which assumes Rullman and Beck’s (1998) semantics of wh-phrases as restricted variables, instead. I argue that a wh-phrase can be bound by a universal modal operator, and this results in a free conditional reading, whereas, when it is bound by a question operator (as in Rullman and Beck, 1998), the question reading arises. Lastly, I turn to free conditionals involving an existential modal, and observe that one needs to stipulate the presence of a covert universal modal in them, in order to account for their truth conditions. The proposal in this dissertation contributes a new perspective on wh-conditionals in Turkish and possibly in other languages, which exhibit similar structures.
A semantic description of Turkish conditional sentences
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2021., 2021.) Soykan, Bergül.; Demirok, Ömer Faruk.
This thesis aims to provide a semantic description for the conditional statements in Turkish by mainly focusing on the interpretations of three different morphemes: namely the aorist, the conditional, and the past markers. Although Göksel and Kerslake (2005) briefly describe how the interpretation of conditional constructions may be affected by these markers, there has not been any detailed study on their semantic contributions. Therefore, I offer a semi-formal explanation for their interpretations in the context of conditionals here. Firstly, for the aorist marker occurring at the antecedent, I propose that it can shift the time of the modal operator in the conditional statement from the time of utterance to the future. However, if it chooses its characterizing reading instead of the future-oriented one, then it functions as an operator quantifying over situations. Secondly, with respect to the conditional morpheme, I argue that there are two separate markers with distinct meaning contributions. I claim that the indicative conditional marker -(y)sA assigns “epistemically possible” presupposition both for its antecedent and consequent clauses whereas the subjunctive -sA additionally brings in a certain “likelihood” presupposition for the antecedent. Lastly, concerning the past marker, I agree with the idea that it keeps its temporal meaning in both types of conditionals. Nevertheless, I suggest that it is interpreted as the modal time of the conditional statement when it is used with the subjunctive conditional marker and the conditional sentence holds no presuppositions in this context. As a result, due to the scalar competition between the past subjunctive and its indicative counterpart, the counterfactuality implicature arises for the past subjunctive conditional construction.
Kazakh esh-words and negative concord
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2021., 2021.) Amirzhanova, Assem.; Guerzoni, Elena.
The goal of this thesis is twofold. First, I present compelling evidence that Esh-words in Kazakh pattern with Strict Negative Concord Items (SNCIs) of the variety found in Slavic languages (e.g. Russian) rather than alleged Negative Polarity Items in Altaic languages like Turkish. Secondly, I propose a novel perspective on SNC which presents significant advantages over existing ones (c.f. Zeijlstra 2004). The most explicit account of SNC languages (Zeijlstra 2004), makes the undesirable assumption that the sentential negative markers in them are just another SNCI licensed by a silent negative operator, thus failing to explain why its presence is obligatory to license all other SNCI. This proposal, instead, focusing on the absence of negative quantifiers (like no NP) in these languages, argues that syntactically local combinations of SNCI phrases with sentential negation is a device to express no NP. The proposal explains why Esh-words must occur with negation: Combining an existential determiner with a non-antimorphic function does not result in a negative determiner. Similarly, intervening quantifiers of any sort disrupt the equivalence with no, therefore the proposal makes two additional desirable predictions: i) Strict NC items are sensitive to intervention effects. ii) Strict NC items must occur in the same clause as the negation licensing them.
The analysis of Turkish passives in discourse
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 1983., 1983.) Tarzi, Muazzez.
A uniform account of personal and impersonal passives in Turkish
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2020., 2020.) Dikmen, Furkan.; Öztürk Başaran, Balkız.
In the literature, the general assumption is that passives of unaccusative predicates, and therefore passives of passives, or double passives are cross-linguistically unavailable. Current theories of syntax and semantics rule out such constructions in various ways. The most recent advancement in this endeavor is to suggest that passivization is necessarily restricted to the Voice domain, which is only available to unergative and (di)transitive structures. However, Turkish systematically allows both passives of unaccusative predicates and double passives, which we argue to pose a serious problem to the syntactic and semantic theory because current theories are founded on the premise that such constructions are prohibited. In this thesis, we will show that passive clauses are not derived from their active counterparts. More specifically, we will suggest that passive clauses are formed with items merged from the passive domain. This domain may consist of more than one passive head, subject to different licensing conditions in a language or may not be available for independent reasons. Hence, we argue that some languages may allow passives of unaccusatives and double passives if they fulfill these conditions. Particularly, we will argue that the head not merged in the active structure may be compensated for in the passive domain. However, if a head must somehow be projected before the passive domain, its corresponding passive form cannot be merged in the passive domain because it would cause two predicates of the same semantic contribution to be present in the same structure.
The causative-inchoative alternation in Turkish Sign Language and the age-of-acquisition effects on complex clauses
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2020., 2020.) Kayabaşı, Demet.; Gökgöz, Kadir.
This study aims to describe the causatives-inchoative alternation in Turkish Sign Language and to discuss the age-of-acquisition effects on multi-predicative constructions observed as both causative and inchoative clauses. The discussion extends itself to remarks on the structure of alternating verbs and serial verb constructions. I present and discuss the results of three tasks: a picture-description task, a picture matching task, and an acceptability judgment task. The results obtained from these tasks reveal that (i) the causative-inchoative alternation in Turkish Sign Language is attested both as labile alternation and classifier alternation, which is mostly compatible with previous accounts on this phenomenon in sign languages; however, Turkish Sign Language provides data that cannot be accounted for by Benedicto & Brentari’s (2004) account that directly links classifier handshapes and transitivity; (ii) both causative and inchoative clauses seem to have complex event structures; (iii) the structure of serial verb constructions seem to be of a mono-clausal nature; (iv) there seems to be no significant age of acquisition effects on preferring labile alternation or classifier alternation to mark the causativeinchoative alternation; yet (v) producing more complex clauses, i.e. serial verb constructions, appear to be an early acquisition group tendency.

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