Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

TURKISH CLAUSE LINKAGE 541

A second bit of evidence that -Ebil is an operator involves examples

such as the following: (Examples from Lewis 1967:152)

(13) Buraya gel-miş ol-abil-ir.

here come-mIş become-ABIL-AOR

"It's possible he came."

(14) Gel-emi-yebil-ir-im

COme-NEG.ABIL-ABIL-AOR-lSG

"I may be unable to come."

In (15) -Ebil occurs on what might be called a "dummy" verb, ol, which
serves to extend tense/aspect/modality distinctions by providing another
verb stem which operators can affix to. Olabilir is generally translated "it is
possible" and demonstrates a frequent observation: the reanalysis of inner
operators as outer operators (see discussion above re -mlş) ; in this instance
a form that usually marks modality is used to mark status. (Cf. the deontic
and epistemic readings of English modals.) The same can be said for the
sentence in (14) where the abilitative suffix occurs outside the negative
modality suffix and receives a status interpretation. I conclude, then, that -
Ebil generally functions to mark a type of modality (in terms of F&VV),
specifically the subject's ability to perform the action, and I will treat it as a
modal operator.
The second potential problem for the claims in F&VV posed by Turk­
ish modality is the fact that the operator marking "ability" seems to be a
more inner operator than is the operator marking "obligation". Recall that
F&VV consider both to be instances of modality. If this turns out to be sim­
ply a matter of internal ordering among core operators, it will not consiti-
tute a counterexample to their claims; as they point out, the perfect and
progressive aspects in English are strictly ordered, the former being outside
the latter. However, as will be shown, it seems there may be instances in
Turkish in which "ability" is a core operator while "obligation" is a clausal
operator. This problem will come up briefly in the discussions below and is
no doubt partly due to the different historical sources for -Ebil "abilitative"
and -mElI "obligation". At this point it can only be suggested that "obliga­
tion" may pattern as a clausal operator rather than as a core operator.