The organization of functional heads and tense aspect mood interpretation in Turkish
Özet
This dissertation investigates the IP-related categories and how the verbal domain of
Turkish is organized. Within the theory of Universal Grammar, there are three major
approaches to the IP domain of languages. The initial distinction is between the Syncretic
IP model and the Rich IP model. The former refers to the conception that human language
only makes available the heads and phrases required in a specific derivation, and that
languages display parametric variation while the latter argues that the human mind comes
with a highly articulated and rigid schematic hierarchy where all features of all functional
categories are available in every derivation without parametric variation, yet most of them
are silent. Additionally, there is an intermediate hypothesis, the Split IP model, where
only major categories such as tense, mood and aspect, have dedicated head positions, and
the morphological form inserted to each head position specifies its value.
The dissertation aims to find out which one of these models is supported by the data
in Turkish. I argue that split or syncretic character of the IP in Turkish should be sensitive
syntactic operations that can target the functional heads individually. With this in mind, I
suggest that a non-finite adjunct clause in Turkish is exceptional in that it lacks any kind
of content when it stands alone, and therefore cannot be uttered in isolation. Yet when
adjoined to a matrix clause, it is interpreted as having the values of the functional heads
in the matrix clause via the mechanism ‘copy’. The data illustrates that although ‘copy’
can target some heads individually, there are two sets of heads that are always copied as
a whole. Assuming that ‘copy’ can only single out independent heads, I conclude that
Turkish has two syncretic phrases where two morphemes co-head the phrase.
Specifically, ability modal and negation form the deontic modality phrase (DmodP) while
tense co-heads another phrase with an aspect or modal marker (TAMP).
