An Investigation of Turkish Clause Linkage
James K. Watters
Summer Institute of Linguistics- Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to explore complex sentence patterns in Turk
ish and investigate their interaction with the categories that have tradition
ally been called tense, aspect, and mood or modality. The theoretical
framework I will employ is that found in Foley & Van Valin (1984) (hereaf
ter F&VV). There is a good reason for this choice: F&VV presents what is,
to my knowledge, the only framework which makes specific claims about
the interaction of such things as tense, aspect and modality with dependent
and main clauses. It will be shown that although the claims in F&VV were
not at all based on facts from Turkish, the Turkish data confirm them to a
remarkable extent. There are, however, a few interesting potential coun
terexamples which will be pointed out in the course of the discussion.
The theory presented in F&VV is known as Role and Reference
Grammar. The name stems from a major typological parameter presented
by Van Valin & Foley there and in other work (e.g., Van Valin & Foley
1980). This parameter deals with the encoding of arguments which for some
languages is based primarily on semantic function ("role-dominated" lan
guages) and for others is based on pragmatic function ("reference-domi
nated" languages). However, the theory makes claims that extend far
beyond issues relating to grammatical relations. This paper will have virtu
ally nothing to say about the notions of "subject" and "object" in Turkish
and will focus instead on claims in F&VV relating to the "layered structure
of the clause".