No abstract

This paper examines the morphological interaction of possessor agreement and the number of the possessor and possessed noun in Turkish and Sakha, two distantly related Turkic languages. Of particular focus are third-person posses- sors, where both languages can use the regular nominal plural suffix -LAr to index 3PL possessors, and (similar to many Turkic languages) do not allow two instances of -LAr in sequence, resulting in a three-way ambiguity, e.g. Sakha at-tar-ï [horse-PL-3.POSS] a. ‘his/her horses,’ b. ‘their horse,’ c. ‘their horses.’ In Turkish, this ambiguity obtains only with pro-dropped possessors, as an overt plural possessor does not index plurality on singular nouns, whereas in Sakha 3PL agreement is obligatory. It is argued that in Sakha, 3PL possession is true agreement, whereas in Turkish the pattern that obtains under pro-drop is a result of the possessor’s PL feature lowering onto the possessed noun. Further, we examine the nature of the *-lar-lar haplology (i.e. the fact that a 3PL-possessing-PL cannot be marked with -lar twice: e.g. Sakha *at-tar-dar-a [horse-PL-PL-3P] ‘their horses,’ contending that it is a particular property of the exponent -lar which occurs during Vocabulary-Insertion.

This study investigates verb doubling structures in Trabzon dialect of Turkish. Based on the similarities and the differences between this structure and the similar phenomena in other languages, I aim to identify the structural properties of VDbl in order to provide a representation of this structure within the Minimalist framework (Chomsky 1993). Following Harizanov and Gribanova’s analysis on Russian predicate clefts, I claim that this structure can be analyzed via the presence of two different movement processes: A focus related movement in narrow syntax, and a post-syntactic head movement.

This study investigates differences in language production of native, early-learner, and late-learner Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili – TİD) signers in the domain of classifiers. For this study, we conducted a picture-signing task to elicit clauses with classifier constructions from adult Deaf signers of these three groups. The results indicate that there is no significant difference among these three groups with respect to the morphological encoding of thematic roles on verbal roots in classifier constructions. Nonetheless, a difference surfaces in the argument expression patterns among these groups. The data show that the age of exposure to a first linguistic input impacts the argument expression rates as well as which arguments are expressed or left unexpressed. Native signers drop the agent argument more frequently than early-learner and late-learner signers. Early-learner signers, in turn, drop the agent argument more frequently than late-learners. The data further indicate that perspective taking interacts with argument expression and age of acquisition. Overall, signers drop the agent more frequently under a character perspective than an observer perspective, with native and early-learner signers employing this strategy more than late-learner signers.