Jaklin Kornfilt (Syracuse University)  

Turkish Relative Clauses between Central Asia and the Mediterranean  

Abstract:

This paper claims that Turkish phrase structure has developed functional projections over time, and that some of these projections are not shared by all of the contemporary other Turkic languages. These projections are CP, TP, DP, and possibly Agr(S)P; i.e. while many other Turkic languages have also developed functional projections, some of them are different from those which Turkish, in its migration to the Mediterranean area, has developed. In Central and East Asia, the number of functional projections is probably smaller, as is their size: I claim that for at least those Central Asian languages this paper will look at in some detail, CP is missing—at least in relative clauses (RCs), but that these languages developed differentiated TPs and Aspect Phrases. Historically, in Old and Middle Turkic, these clauses were Aspect/Mood-clauses, or possibly even smaller projections, i.e. bare VPs—a situation reflected quite closely in the non-Turkish contemporary Turkic languages.