Subject Case in Turkish nominalized clauses*
Jaklin Kornfilt
1.
Introduction and summary
It is well-known that the distinction between adjuncts and arguments
plays an important role in syntax. For example, arguments can be
extracted more easily than adjuncts out of syntactic islands. Furthermore, adjunct domains tend to be syntactic islands, while argument
clauses tend not to have island properties (abstracting away from
syntactic subjects). In this paper, I claim that the argument-adjunct
distinction can also play a role in determining the Case on the subject
of a particular syntactic domain. It is the status as an adjunct versus
as an argument of that domain which can determine, I claim, the type
of subject Case.
This paper is also a case study in the interactions of morphology
and syntax, as it claims that overt Agr(eement) 1 determines subject
Case (but only where Agr is licensed itself in this capacity). Another
aspect of the morphology-syntax interaction shown here is absence
of a one-to-one relationship between syntactic and morphological
Case: while morphological Genitive indeed reflects licensed nominal
subject Case, morphological Nominative (possibly by virtue of being
phonologically null) reflects both licensed verbal subject Case and
default Case.
The specific proposals made in this paper are listed below:
1.I claim that Turkish has three types of overt subjects: Those
that bear genuine subject Case, those that bear default Case, and
those which are Case-less. “Genuine subject Case” is licensed by a
designated Case licenser; for Turkish, this is the overt Agr(eement)
marker. Such subject Case can be Nominative or Genitive in Turkish,
depending on the categorial features of Agr.
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Jaklin Kornfilt
Default Case is possible as a last resort strategy, when subject
Case is not licensed for an overt subject, and when no other licenser
can license another appropriate Case (e.g. an ECM verb licensing
Accusative).
Case-less subjects will be discussed briefly, as well; these are
non-specific, and they are less mobile than the other two types of
subjects.
2.The proposed interaction between the argument-adjunct
asymmetry and the designated subject Case licenser, i.e. overt Agr, is
implemented in the following way:
Agr needs to be licensed itself in order to function as a subject
Case licenser. This can happen in three ways:
A.Categorially, i.e. via matching category features: A verbal Agr
is licensed in a fully verbal extended projection, and a nominal Agr is
licensed in a fully nominal extended projection.2
B.However, where there is a categorial mismatch, Agr must be
licensed differently. This is when the argument-adjunct asymmetry
comes into play:
An argument domain bears a thematic index (cf. the proposal in
Rizzi 1994 that arguments bear a “referential” index, while adjuncts
don’t); this index is inherited by the Agr (if there is one) that heads
the argument domain in question. 3 I assume that it is such indexation
which licenses a categorially unlicensed Agr as a subject Case
licenser. Thus, if Agr does not match its clause categorially, it is only
where that clause is an argument that Agr will be able to license
subject Case; where the domain is an adjunct, a categorially mismatched Agr cannot license subject Case.
We thus correctly predict the existence of argument-adjunct
asymmetries with respect to subject Case in categorially hybrid
clauses, as well as the absence of such asymmetries in categorially
homogeneous clauses.
C.There is another way for a categorially mismatched Agr to
receive an index and thus to get licensed as a subject Case licenser:
via predication with an external head, i.e. when the domain headed
by that Agr receives an index via predication (in headed operatorvariable constructions like relative clauses and comparatives), and
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
131
when, once again, the Agr head inherits the index of the clause in
question.
3.In all other instances (i.e. where there is no Agr, or where an
existing, but categorially unlicensed Agr cannot receive an index by
either “referential” θ-marking or under predication), no genuine
subject Case is possible. The clause will have either a PRO subject
or, if it has an overt subject, that subject will be in a default Case
rather than in a genuine subject Case. The paper discusses the issue
of default Case and proposes criteria determining when default Case
is possible and when it is not. It further proposes that the
morphological realization of default Case may differ across
languages; e.g. it is Accusative in English, while it is Nominative in
Turkish.
4.Coming back to subject Case, it is licensed locally within the
extended functional projection of the clause; no clause-external
nominal element is involved in this licensing—at least not directly,
as the licenser of subject Case.
5.The account proposed is compatible with approaches where
AgrP is an independent projection (Pollock 1989, Kornfilt 1984), but
also with approaches where Agr is positioned within the head of
another functional projection, e.g. of the head of a Fin(iteness)P (cf.
Rizzi 1997), as long as Agr is housed in a projection separate from
TAM (i.e. Tense, Aspect, Mood).
6.This paper is, at the same time, a case study concerning the
two most widely used nominalization types in Turkish, with respect
to genuine subject Case. The argument-adjunct asymmetry mentioned in 2. is observed in one type of nominalization only (i.e. the indicative type) and not the other (i.e. the subjunctive type).
The account proposed claims that, while both types of subordinate
domains are DPs, only indicatives are also CPs. This explains the
sensitivity of indicatives to “CP-level” phenomena and to θ-marking,
and the lack of such sensitivity in non-indicative subordination.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the two
main asymmetries and establishes the relevance of Agr for subject
Case. Section 3 offers a basic account of subject Case. Section 4
extends that account to predication. Section 5 draws preliminary
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Jaklin Kornfilt
conclusions. Section 6 discusses the nature of default Case. Section 7
proposes an explanation for when default Case may or may not be
allowed. Section 8 discusses two rival approaches to the first
asymmetry (i.e. the asymmetry between arguments and adjuncts in
nominalized factive clauses) and presents counterarguments. Section
9 summarizes this study’s conclusions and mentions some
speculations.
The paper is written in a general Principles and Parameters
framework without focussing on formalistic issues, to enhance readability by an audience of the kind that attended the workshop where
this work was presented. For the same reason, I have not formulated
my account in strictly Minimalistic terms.
2.
Basic facts: Different types of clauses
I now turn to an exposition of the basic facts, starting with different
types of subordinate clauses.
Embedded clauses in Turkish typically are not tensed, and are
traditionally said to be nominalized to varying degrees. However,
some subordination, even of the head-final type, is fully verbal; I
start my discussion of subject Case with that type.
The main point of this section will be to show that genuine subject
Case is licensed by Agr, and that TAM morphology does not play a
role in this regard.
More specifically, I shall claim that there is only one kind of
genuine subject Case, irrespective of its morphological realization as
Nominative or Genitive: subject Case licensed by Agr. Depending on
the categorial features of this Agr as [+N] or [+V], this subject Case
will be realized as Genitive (=nominal subject Case) or Nominative
(=verbal subject Case), respectively.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
133
2.1. “Verbal clauses”—“verbal” to the fullest
2.1.1.
Indicatives
“Regular” indicative root clauses exhibit a rich array of TAM
markers, as well as (predicate-subject) agreement markers. The latter
come from a particular agreement paradigm which is the most widely
used one for verbal predicates4 in the language.5 (1) exemplifies this
type, with the TAM marker as the future tense:
(1)
Sen
yar›n
akflam ev
-de
yemek
you(SG) (NOM) tomorrow evening home -LOC food
piflir-ecek -sin
cook-FUT -2.SG
‘You will cook food at home tomorrow evening.’
Notice that the subject is in the Nominative. (In Turkish, there is
no phonologically realized Nominative morpheme; I assume here
that the syntactic Nominative corresponds to a null morpheme.)
Identical clauses can be found as subordinate clauses when used
as quotations, but also as “regular” subordinate clauses with a
number of matrix verbs; the following two examples illustrate these
two situations, in the order mentioned:
(2)
a.[Sen
yar›n
akflam ev
-de
yemek
you(SG) (NOM) tomorrow evening home -LOC food
piflir -ecek -sin ] diye
duy -du
-m
cook -FUT -2.SG ‘saying’ hear -PAST -1.SG
‘I heard “you will cook food at home tomorrow evening”.’
b.[Sen
yar›n
akflam ev
-de
yemek
you(SG) (NOM) tomorrow evening home -LOC food
piflir -ecek -sin ] san
-›yor
-um
cook -FUT -2.SG believe-PRSPROG -1.SG
‘I believe you will cook food at home tomorrow evening.’
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Jaklin Kornfilt
Exceptional Case Marking [ECM]-constructions provide evidence
that it is not TAM—morphology which is responsible for licensing
of the subject and of its Case.6
This can be seen clearly in the contrast between fully verbal
subordinate clauses like (2)b., where we just saw a subordinate
clause exhibiting fully verbal TAM as well as fully verbal Agr
morphology, and a corresponding subordinate clause also exhibiting
fully verbal TAM morphology, but no Agr morphology. (3)a. is
similar to (2)b. in showing that a fully verbal subordinate clause with
verbal TAM morphology and with verbal Agr morphology has a
Nominative subject, this time with a subordinate clause that exhibits
progressive aspect and simple past tense:
(3)
a.[Sen
dün
sabah
ev
-de yemek
you(SG)(NOM) yesterday morning home -LOC food
piflir -iyor -du
-n ] san
-d›
-m
cook -PROG -PAST -2.SG believe-PAST -1.SG
‘I believed (that) you were cooking food at home yesterday
morning.’
The next example exhibits an interesting pattern: the subordinate
clause has the identical (verbal) aspect and tense combination, but it
lacks Agr marking:
(3)
b.[Sen
-i
dün
sabah
ev
-de
yemek
you(SG) -ACC yesterday morning home -LOC food
piflir -iyor -du ]
san
-d›
-m
cook -PROG -PAST (no Agr) believe-PAST -1.SG
‘I believed you to have been cooking food at home yesterday
morning.’
This last example shows that when Agr is absent, the subject
cannot show up in the appropriate subject Case, which would be the
verbal subject Case in this instance, i.e. in the Nominative. Instead,
where the matrix verb is one of a small number of ECM verbs,
Accusative is licensed by that verb.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
135
It should be noted that many speakers accept ECM-like
constructions with overt Agr, as well:
(3)
c.[Sen
-i
dün
sabah
ev
-de
yemek
you(SG) -ACC yesterday morning home -LOC food
piflir -iyor -du
-n ] san
-d›
-m
cook -PROG -PAST -2.SG believe-PAST -1.SG
‘I believed you to have been cooking food at home yesterday
morning.’
I shall not, in the context of this paper, address the issue of the
nature of ECM in Turkish in detail, nor in the status of (3)c. It is
possible, for example, that while (3)b. is a genuine instance of ECM,
(3)c. exemplifies a phonologically empty subject (i.e. pro) copy in
the subordinate clause, with the Accusative DP actually raised into
the matrix (cf. Moore 1998).
For the purposes of this paper, the important point is the
following: all speakers accept (3)b., with an Accusative subject
under absence of Agr in the verbal subordinate clause, and no
speaker would accept (3)d., where the Agr element is missing, yet
where the embedded subject is in the Nominative:
(3)
d.*[[Sen
dün
sabah
ev
-de yemek
you(SG) (NOM) yesterday morning home -LOC food
piflir -iyor -du
]
san
-d›
-m
cook -PROG -PAST (no Agr) believe-PAST -1.SG
Intended reading: ‘I believed (that) you [Nom.] were
yesterday morning.’cooking food at home yesterday
morning.’
Note that both in the fully grammatical (3)b. and in the
completely ungrammatical (3)d., the embedded predicate bears its
regular TAM morphology, i.e. in this instance, markers for progressive aspect and for past tense. Therefore, the licenser of Nominative
subjects, i.e. of the verbal subject Case, cannot be the verbal TAM
morphology.
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Jaklin Kornfilt
The second part of our conclusion must therefore be as follows:
the licenser of the Nominative in root as well as embedded verbal
clauses is the (verbal) Agr marker.
Our general observation so far, then, is as follows: 1. There is a
strict correlation between (verbal) Agr and (verbal) subject Case, i.e.
Nominative; 2. There is no correlation at all between (verbal) TAM
morphology and the (verbal) subject Case.
From a cross-linguistic point of view, it is not a novel observation
that ECM is not limited to infinitival subordinate clauses (while it is
so limited in some languages, e.g. English). There are some
languages where ECM can apply to subjunctive clauses, and some
where ECM is possible even into clauses with tense and agreement;
the latter is the case, for example, in Modern Greek.
The Turkish facts are of special interest nevertheless. First of all,
the subordinate clauses into which ECM may apply are indicative,
not subjunctive. It is well-known that subjunctive clauses are more
“transparent” than indicative ones with respect to a number of
syntactic phenomena, ECM being only one of them. The same is true
with respect to anaphoric binding, for example.
Secondly, in Modern Greek, the morphological infinitival has
been lost. Tensed forms of verbs are therefore used instead of the
infinitival; in such instances, they can be said to be “fake” tenses. For
example, the citation form of verbs is tensed, with subject agreement.
Therefore, it is not too surprising that ECM should be able to apply
into a tensed subordinate clause that also exhibits predicate-subject
agreement.7
In contrast, the tenses in Turkish verbal subordinate clauses with
ECM are genuine. Turkish does have a morphological infinitive;
therefore, tensed forms of the verb are not used in place of the
infinitive, and are genuinely tensed.
Thus, the fact that Nominative subjects are only possible in fully
verbal subordinate clauses in the presence of verbal Agr, and that
verbal genuine Tense forms do not license overt Nominative subjects
when Agr is absent, is significant cross-linguistically, as well as for
Turkish individually.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
137
I shall make the further assumption that (a licensed) Agr must be
in C so as to act as a Case licenser. That the level of CP is involved
can be seen by the contrast between extractions out of ECM-clauses
versus fully finite (in the sense of George and Kornfilt 1981) verbal
clauses:
(4)
a.??/*[Ali-nin [sen -i
ei yaz -dı ]
Ali-GEN you -ACC
write-PAST
san
-dı¤-ı ] mektupi
believe -FN-3.SG letter
Intended reading: ‘*the letter which Ali believes you to have
written’8
b.[Ali -nin [sen ei yaz -dı
-n ]
Ali -GEN you
write -PAST -2.SG
san
-dı¤-ı ] mektupi
believe -FN-3.SG letter
‘the letter which Ali believes you wrote’
I now turn to another type of fully verbal subordinate clause,
namely to subjunctives.
2.1.2.
Subjunctives
There is a predicate form in root clauses which is called the Optative
or Subjunctive; I shall use the second form. This form takes different
predicate-subject Agr forms than Indicatives; however, these forms
are verbal, as well, and thus differ from nominal Agr forms. The
subject is in the Nominative. These clauses are illustrated by the next
example:
(5)
a.Ben
bugün yemek piflir -e
-yim
I (NOM) today food cook -SUBJNCT -1.SG
‘I should/ought to cook food today;
Let me cook food today.’
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Jaklin Kornfilt
Just as we saw for Indicatives, Subjunctive clauses can also be
embedded and show up in a form completely identical to a root
clause:
(5)
b. [Ben
bugün yemek piflir -e
-yim ]
I (NOM) today food cook -SUBJNCT -1.SG
isti -yor
-um
want -PRSPROG -1.SG
‘I want to cook [that I should cook] food today;
I want for myself to cook food today.’
The facts here are just as expected; whether in root or embedded
clauses, the Agr form is verbal, and it licenses verbal subject Case,
i.e. the Nominative, on a subject.
In the next subsection, I turn to nominalized embedded clauses. In
that subsection, I shall aim at establishing the same correlation
between Agr and subject Case for such clauses that we saw in fully
verbal clauses. Another aim of the discussion will be to establish a
categorial difference between the two main types of embedded
nominal clauses—a difference which I claim plays a central role in
the licensing of nominal Agr as a subject Case licenser. More
specifically, I will claim that while nominal subjunctive clauses are
homogeneously nominal, nominal indicative clauses are categorially
hybrid, with a nominal Agr sandwiched between a verbal TAM layer
and a verbal CP (or Force Phrase) layer. Therefore, while nominal
Agr is fully licensed within the fully nominal subjunctive clause, it is
not so licensed within the hybrid indicative clause and therefore
needs another licensing mechanism.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
139
2.2. Non-tensed argument clause types
2.2.1.
Similarities and differences
Turkish has a few different “nominalization” types. For the purposes
of this paper, the term “nominalization” is being used to refer to an
extended clausal projection with some nominal functional layers that
represent “nominalization” (for which diagrams will be shown later
in the paper), and not to lexically derived deverbal nouns.9
I illustrate the two main types of syntactic nominalization here,
namely the “factive” (i.e. indicative) and “non-factive” (i.e. subjunctive) types.
“Factive” (indicative) nominalized embedded clause:
(6)
a.[Sen -in
dün
sabah ev
-de
yemek
you -GEN yesterday morning home -LOC food
piflir -di¤ -in ]-i
duy -du
-m
cook -FN-2.SG-ACC hear -PAST -1.SG
/san
-dı
-m
/believe -PAST -1.SG
‘I heard/believed that you had been/were cooking/cooked
/had cooked food at home yesterday morning.’
“Non-factive” (subjunctive) nominalized clause:
(6)
b.[Sen -in
yar›n
ev
-de
yemek
you -GEN tomorrow home -LOC food
piflir -me
-n ]-i
isti -yor
-um
cook -NFN10 -2.SG -ACC want -PRSPROG -1.SG
‘I want for you to cook food at home tomorrow;
I want that you should cook food at home tomorrow.’
These two types of nominalized embedded clauses exhibit some
similarities as well as differences.
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Jaklin Kornfilt
I start with the similarities: the subject in both types is in the
Genitive, i.e. in what I have been calling the nominal subject Case.
This is just as expected under the correlation I have posited here,
because Agr is also nominal in both.
Both types are ultimately, i.e. in their highest functional layer(s),
DPs which need Case just like any DP. Such Case is licensed by a
structurally higher Case licenser and is realized, in both clausal
types, as the last morpheme in the morphological sequence of the
nominalized predicate.
A further point of similarity concerns the morphological sequence
within the predicate. In both types, the “factive” and the “nonfactive” nominal morphemes appear in the morphological slot in
which TAM morphemes show up in fully verbal clauses; this can be
seen by comparing the examples presented so far for fully verbal
versus nominal clauses. These nominal morphemes share not just the
morphological slot, but also certain semantic properties with the
corresponding TAM morphemes: mood properties like indicativity
versus subjunctivity are similar (hence my terms of nominal
indicative and subjunctive). Furthermore, as we shall see presently,
the indicative nominal marker can also express a vestige of tense.
Yet another property in which the two types of clauses are similar
is in exhibiting the full argument structure of their respective
predicates. From this point of view, these two types of nominalized
clauses are not different from fully verbal clauses; similar adjuncts
can show up, as well.
I now turn to the differences between these two nominal clauses.
The non-factive clauses are more nominal than the factive ones in a
number of ways. I shall therefore be claiming in this paper that nonfactive, i.e. subjunctive nominal clauses are homogeneously DPs;
factive, i.e. indicative nominal clauses, on the other hand, are, at the
same time, CPs (or, in the terminology of Rizzi 1997, Force
Phrases), i.e. they have at least one “high” functional layer with
verbal features within a nominal functional projection, i.e. within a
DP (in addition to a “low” verbal functional layer, i.e. the TAM
layer).
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
141
1. I take Tense to be part of a verbal property. As we shall see
presently, nominal indicatives can be overtly marked for future
versus non-future tense (-DIK: non-future, -(y)AcAK: future 11). This
verbal property is congruent with positing a higher CP-layer, which
has verbal features, as well. In contrast, Subjunctive nominal clauses
have only one marker, -mA, and are thus neutral for tense.
The non-future nominal indicative was exemplified above; the
next example illustrates the future tense nominal indicative:
(6)
c.[Sen -in
ev
-de
yemek
you -GEN home -LOC food
piflir -ece¤ -in ]-i
duy -du
-m
cook -FUTN -2.SG -ACC hear -PAST -1.SG
‘I heard that you will cook food at home.’
As the translation makes clear, the embedded nominal indicative
clause is independent from the root clause with respect to tense. In
other words, the embedded clause has its own tense features.
This contrasts with embedded nominal subjunctive clauses; with
respect to tense, these depend on the clause they are embedded
under:
(6)
d.[Sen -in
ev
-de
yemek
you -GEN home -LOC food
piflir -me -n ]-i
isti -yor
-um
cook -NFN -2.SG -ACC want -PRSPROG -1.SG
/iste -di
-m
/isti -yece¤ -im
/want -PAST -1.SG /want -FUT -1.SG
‘I want/wanted/will want for you to cook food at home.’
These examples have shown us that nominalized indicatives have
tense (albeit by far not as richly so as in fully verbal clauses) and
have thus verbal properties, in contrast to nominal subjunctive
clauses that lack tense completely and thus lack corresponding verbal
properties.
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Jaklin Kornfilt
2. In addition to lacking (functional) verbal properties, subjunctive nominals have certain nominal properties which are absent in
nominal indicatives. Subjunctive nominalizations can, with varying
degrees of success, be pluralized and can also co-occur with certain
determiners, e.g. with demonstratives, while neither is possible with
indicatives:
(6)
e.**[Hasan -›n
bu durmadan kumarhane -ye
Hasan -GEN this constantly casino
-DAT
kaç
-t›k -lar -›n ] -ı
escape -FN -PL -3.SG -ACC
duy -ma -mıfl -tı
-m
hear -NEG -PERF -PAST -1.SG
Intended reading: ‘I hadn’t heard (about) these constant
runnings (away) of Hasan to the gambling casino.’
(6)
f. ?(?)[Hasan-›n
bu durmadan kumarhane -ye
Hasan -GEN this constantly casino
-DAT
kaç
-ma -lar -›n ] -dan
escape -NFN -PL -3.SG -ABL
hofllan -m› -yor
-um
like
-NEG -PRSPROG -1.SG
‘I don’t like these constant runnings (away) of Hasan to the
gambling casino (i.e. that Hasan should run to the casino
constantly).’
3. There is very suggestive evidence showing that nominal
indicatives are CPs, while nominal subjunctives are not: non-factive
nominalized clauses cannot host WH-operators, i.e. they can neither
act as embedded WH- or Yes/No-questions, nor can they function as
modifying clauses in relative clause constructions. Factive
nominalized clauses can be used in all of those functions, arguing
that they are CPs (and thus have a Spec, CP position that can host an
operator), albeit dominated by DP, while non-factive nominalized
clauses are homogeneously DPs and consequently don’t have a
qualifying Specifier position for the operators in question. 12
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
143
The following examples illustrate the contrasting properties of
nominal indicative versus subjunctive embedded clauses with respect
to embedded (i.e. narrow-scope) WH-questions and with respect to
relative clauses, in this order.
(7)
[yeme¤ -i
kim -in
piflir -di¤-in ]-i
food -ACC who -GEN cook -FN-3.SG -ACC
sor -du
-m /duy -du
-m
ask -PAST -1.SG /hear -PAST -1.SG
/söyle-di
-m
/tell -PAST -1.SG
‘I asked/heard/told who had cooked the food.’
(8)
*[yeme¤ -i
kim -in
piflir -me -sin ]-i
food -ACC who -GEN cook -NFN -3.SG -ACC
söyle-di
-m
tell -PAST -1.SG
Intended reading: ‘I said who should cook the food.’
The indicative nominal clause in (7), by virtue of being a CP, has
a position in which a WH-operator is licensed: the Spec, CP position.
Please note that in recent approaches (such as the one proposed in
Rizzi 1997) in which the CP is layered further into a number of
distinct functional projections, this position could plausibly be the
Specifier position of a Force Phrase. What’s important here is that
nominal indicative clauses would include such a projection, and thus
its Specifier position, as a position which is qualified to host a WHoperator, while subjunctive nominal clauses, by virtue of not having
such a functional projection, cannot host a WH-operator. (Please
note that this statement will be generalized soon, so as to include any
operator.)
Note also that there is nothing wrong with the nominal
subjunctive clause in combination with the matrix predicate in (8)
per se; this is illustrated in the next example, where the
corresponding declarative nominalized subjunctive is fine in the
same syntactic context:
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Jaklin Kornfilt
(9)
[yeme¤ -i
Ali-nin
piflir -me -sin ]-i
food -ACC Ali -GEN cook -NFN -3.SG-ACC
söyle -di
-m
tell -PAST -1.SG
‘I said that Ali should cook the food.’
The ungrammaticality of (8) is thus clearly due to the fact that the
subjunctive clause is an embedded interrogative and that there is a
question operator there for which the clause does not offer an appropriate position.
It is instructive to observe that the desired reading in (8) can be
expressed, but with some additional means—namely involving the
indicative: it is necessary to embed the subjunctive under an appropriate nominal indicative clause; e.g.:
(10) [[yeme¤ -i
kim -in
piflir -me -si ]
food -ACC who -GEN cook -NFN -3.SG
gerek
-ti¤ -in ]-i
söyle-di
-m
(be) necessary -FN-3.SG -ACC tell -PAST -1.SG
‘I said for whom it was necessary to cook the food.’
Now, the embedded interrogative has become larger, i.e. it is the
nominal indicative clause that dominates the subjunctive clause. As
we said earlier, the indicative clause does, by virtue of being a CP (or
a Force Phrase) have the necessary specifier position for the
interrogative operator, and the result is fine. Similar facts hold for
Y/N questions, as well; I shall not illustrate those, due to constraints
on space.
Finally, it is interesting to note that the issue is not just one of
licensing a [+WH] operator via [+WH] features of a qualifying
functional head. This is because a similar dichotomy between
nominal indicative versus subjunctive clauses can be observed with
respect to relative clauses, as well. The operator in relative clauses is
not [+WH]. Therefore, the issue is not merely one of [+WH] features
being licensed by a particular functional head (or not being so
licensed), but rather of having a functional projection whose
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
145
Specifier position is able to host any operator that can enter into an
operator-variable relationship.
The following examples illustrate the contrast between the two
types of nominal embedded clauses with respect to relative clause
constructions.
I start with indicative RCs:
(11) [Ali-nin ei piflir -di¤ -i ] yemeki
Ali-GEN
cook -FN-3.SG food
‘The food Ali cooked’
Subjunctive RCs don’t exist (with the exception of irrealis RCs, to
be discussed later):
(12) *[Ali -nin ei piflir -me -si ] yemeki
Ali -GEN cook -NFN -3.SG food
Intended reading: ‘The food Ali should cook’
Embedding the subjunctive RC under an appropriate indicative
“saves” the utterance:
(13) [[Ali-nin ei piflir -me -sin ] -i
söyle -di¤-im ]
Ali -GEN cook -NFN -3.SG -ACC tell -FN-1.SG
yemeki
food
‘The food which I said Ali should cook’
The explanation for the ungrammaticality of (12), as well as the
reason for why embedding the ungrammatical subjunctive modifier
clause under an indicative saves the utterance in (13) carry over from
the discussion of embedded interrogatives—under the proposed
extension from [+WH] operators to any operator, with the corresponding extension from a functional head with [+WH] features to
one whose categorial features enable it to AGREE with any operator,
i.e. an extension to a C-head or a Force-head.
146
Jaklin Kornfilt
The following diagrams integrate the proposals made in the previous discussion, starting with a subjunctive nominalized clause.
(14) a.
KP
g
K'
AgrP
DPi
¡
¡
¡
¡
¡
¡
¡
¡
¡
5
5
@
Agr'
5
DPi
¡
¡
¡
¡
¡
MP
5
M'
4
VP
3
DPi
V'
¡
2
DP
V
! ! @
g
M
¡
¡
¡
¡
K
¡
¡
¡
Agr ¡
(=Fin) ¡
¡ ¡
¡ ¡
¡ ¡
¡ ¡
¡ ¡
¡ ¡
¡ ¡
Ali nini
ti
ti
kitab -›
oku -ma -sın
-ı
Ali -GEN
book -ACC read -NFN -3.SG -ACC
‘for Ali to read the book’ [=‘for Ali’s reading the book’]
(as a direct object)
(Adapted from Borsley and Kornfilt 2000:108)
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
147
The following is a rough representation for an indicative nominalized clause:
(14) b.
CP
g
C'
KP
g
K'
4
K
¡
¡
¡
5
¡
AgrP
C
(=Force) ¡
¡
DPi
Agr'
¡
5
¡
¡
MP
Agr
¡
¡
5
(=Fin)
¡
¡
DPi
M'
¡
¡
¡
¡
4
¡
¡
¡
¡
VP
M ¡
¡
¡
¡
3
¡ ¡
¡
¡
¡ DPi
V'
¡ ¡
¡
¡
¡ ¡
2
¡ ¡
¡
DP
V ¡ ¡
¡
@
! ! @
g
Ali nini
ti
ti
kitab -›
oku du¤ -un
-u
Ali -GEN
book -ACC read -FN -3.SG
-ACC
‘(that) Ali read the book’ (as a direct object)
5
These rough representations are very similar, with the exception
of a CP- (or Force-Phrase)-layer between the AgrP (or Finiteness
Phrase) and the KP, the highest layer of the nominal clause (i.e. a
Case Phrase) in the representation for the nominal indicative clause
148
Jaklin Kornfilt
—a layer which is missing in the representation of the fully nominal
subjunctive clause, as discussed.
As a consequence, the nominal Agr finds itself between two
verbal phrasal layers in the nominal indicative clause, while it is
surrounded by fully nominal layers in the subjunctive clause. The
significance of this difference for the proposed account of subject
Case will be central for my account; a discussion of this significance
will be initiated in section 3.
Is it a coincidence that there is a CP (or a Force Phrase) in a
clause where there are also Tense features? The answer is no. As
mentioned in the earlier discussion, Tense features are verbal, and so
are the features of the CP (or of the Force Phrase); thus, there is a
categorial agreement between these layers. This analysis predicts that
we would not get lack of Tense if a CP-layer is present which
exhibits CP-related syntactic properties. This prediction is indeed
fulfilled in Turkish, as we saw. I expect it also to hold cross-linguistically, and, as far as I know, it does.
2.2.2.
The importance of nominal Agr for genuine subject Case
and infinitival clauses
I now turn to the importance of nominal Agr in licensing subject
Case.
A subset of matrix predicates that subcategorize for subjunctive
argument clauses also co-occur with infinitival argument clauses.
Such clauses share with the previously illustrated nominalized
clauses the property of being Case-marked:
(15) Beni [PROi karanl›k -ta
sokak -lar -da
I
darkness -LOC street -PL -LOC
yürü -mek ]-ten
kork -ar -›m
walk-INF -ABL fear -AOR -1.SG
‘I am afraid to walk in the streets in the dark.’
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
149
Such infinitival clauses cannot bear overt Agr markers. Note that
there is no such marker between the infinitival marker and the Case
marker on the clause.
Overt subjects are not possible in infinitivals, no matter what their
Case is:
(16) *Ben [k›z
-›m
/k›z
-›m -›n
I
daughter -1.SG[NOM] /daughter-1.SG -GEN
karanl›k-ta
sokak -lar -da
yürü -mek] -ten
darkness -LOC street -PL -LOC walk -INF -ABL
kork -ar -›m
fear -AOR -1.SG
Intended reading: ‘I am afraid for my daughter to walk in the
streets in the dark.’
I claim here that these two observations are linked to each other;
in other words, infinitival clauses have no Agr, and it is therefore that
the only possible subject in such clauses is PRO. (This statement will
be refined later.)
For an utterance like (16) to be grammatical with an overt subject,
the embedded predicate must be marked with the non-factive
nominalization marker, instead of with the infinitive (thus preserving
subjunctive Mood), and it must also bear overt Agr morphology:
(17) Ben [k›z
-›m -›n
karanl›k -ta
I
daughter-1.SG -GEN darkness -LOC
sokak -lar -da
yürü -me -sin ]-den
street -PL -LOC walk -NFN -3.SG -ABL
kork -ar -›m
fear -AOR -1.SG
‘I am afraid for my daughter to walk in the streets in the dark.’
Again, the observations are linked: Where there is Agr, there is
also an overt subject, and that subject appears in the appropriate
genuine subject Case. This is the Genitive, i.e. the nominal subject
Case, because the Agr itself has nominal features. PRO cannot show
150
Jaklin Kornfilt
up in the presence of Agr. For the purposes of this paper, I shall not
be concerned with the specifics of why this is not possible; the two
main types of answers would be either that this is due to some
implementation of the original PRO-Theorem (cf. Chomsky 1981),
or else to an inappropriate Case being licensed for the subject
position if that position is occupied by PRO (cf. Chomsky and
Lasnik 1991). Either way, the presence of Agr would preclude the
presence of a PRO-subject.
We thus explain the two correlations we have observed in this
discussion of nominal clauses:
Correlation A: when there is infinitival morphology, there is no
Agr; no overt subject possible (because no Case of any type—or a
Case of an inappropriate type—is licensed); the only possible subject
is PRO.
Correlation B: when there is instead nominal subjunctive
morphology (which has the same Mood as the infinitival), there also
is overt (nominal) Agr; now, an overt subject with nominal subject
Case (i.e. Genitive) shows up; no PRO subject is possible.
We are now able to collapse the correlations we have set up for
verbal and for nominal clauses into one overall correlation:
For both nominal and fully verbal clauses: where overt Agr shows
up, the overt subject is licensed via the corresponding (i.e. nominal
or verbal) subject Case (i.e. Genitive or Nominative, respectively),
depending on the nominal versus verbal features of the Agr. Without
Agr, no genuine subject Case of any sort is possible.
Having thus concluded a preliminary discussion of verbal as well
as nominal argument clauses, I turn to adjunct clauses.
2.3. Adjunct clauses
2.3.1.
Indicative adjunct clauses with nominal Agr
Both the nominal indicative and the nominal subjunctive clause types
which we discussed as argument clauses can also appear as adjuncts.
Those are usually complements of postpositions, but they can also
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
151
occur without a postposition. The two asymmetries mentioned in the
introduction surface when we compare these with the corresponding
argument clauses just discussed.
I start the discussion of adjunct clauses with examples of nominal
indicative clauses as objects of postpositions, followed by examples
of the same type of clause without any postposition, but still as
adjuncts. Comparison of these adjunct nominal indicatives (whether
with or without postpositions) with their argumental counterparts
will establish the first asymmetry.
The main property to notice about these adjunct nominal
indicatives is that their subjects are not in the Genitive, as expected,
but rather in the Nominative—or, if we don’t want to prejudge the
issue at this point, we can say that the subjects are bare. The first
three examples illustrate this for nominal indicatives that are
postpositional objects, and the latter two exhibit the same fact for the
same clause type, used as adjuncts, but without a postposition:
(18) [[Sen
yemek piflir -di¤-in ] için ] ben
you(SG) (NOM) food cook -FN-2.SG because I
konser -e
gid -ebil -di
-m
concert-DAT go -ABIL -PAST -1.SG
‘Because you cooked, I was able to go to the concert.’
(19) [[Sen
yemek piflir -di¤-in ] -e
you(SG) (NOM) food cook -FN-2.SG -DAT
göre
] hepiniz ev
-de
kal -acak -s›n›z
according to all+you home -LOC stay -FUT -2.PL
‘Given that you cooked, all of you will stay at home.’
(20) [[Ben
yemek piflir -di¤-im ] -den
dolay›]
I (NOM) food cook -FN-1.SG -ABL because
konser -e
gid -e
-me -di
-m
concert -DAT go -NegABIL -NEG -PAST -1.SG
‘Because I cooked, I was unable to go to the concert.’
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Jaklin Kornfilt
(21) [[Ben
yemek piflir -di¤-im ] -den konser -e
I (NOM) food cook -FN-1.SG -ABL concert-DAT
gid -e
-me -di
-m
go -NegABIL -NEG -PAST -1.SG
‘Because I cooked, I was unable to go to the concert.’
(22) [Sen
konser -e
git -ti¤ -in ] -de
ben
you(SG) (NOM) concert-DAT go -FN-2.SG -LOC I
ev
-e
dön -üyor -du
-m
home -DAT return -PROG -PAST -1.SG
‘When you were going to the concert (at your going to the
concert), I returned home.’
This appears to be a problem for the account I proposed so far.
Note that in all of these examples, the nominal indicative clause does
include a nominal Agr marker, and that all of these clauses do carry
some kind of θ-role, albeit an adjunct θ-role. Thus, one would
assume that some sort of thematic index would be assigned to the
clause and be inherited by the nominal Agr, thus enabling it to
license subject Case. However, this would incorrectly predict
Genitive subjects here, as this would be the licensed subject Case.
I would like to claim that this problem is only apparent. I shall
propose in this paper that the subjects of adjunct indicative clauses
are in a default Case (and not in a genuine, licensed subject Case),
because the Agr element is not licensed by a primary θ-index. I
follow Grimshaw (1990) in distinguishing primary from secondary
θ-roles—a distinction which directly corresponds to the one in Rizzi
(1994) between referential and non-referential indexation, which is a
distinction drawn between arguments and adjuncts. In line with this
distinction, I refine the proposal I made earlier about licensing a
nominal Agr which is not categorially licensed. I had proposed that
such an Agr needs to carry a θ-index to be licensed as a subject Case
licenser. I now constrain that proposal: this θ-index must be that of a
primary θ-role in Grimshaw’s sense, i.e. a “referential” index in
Rizzi’s sense. While any θ-index might be sufficient to license Agr
as a subject Case marker in some other languages, it is clear that for
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
153
Turkish, there must be such a constraint imposed on the type of
indexation.13
I shall return to the issue of default Case in subsection 2.3.3., by
showing that it applies to adjunct clauses without any Agr element,
as well, thus providing independent motivation for this mechanism in
the grammar. An account of my overall approach to subject Case will
be offered in section 3.
The present subsection has illustrated the first asymmetry
mentioned in the introduction; the next subsection illustrates the
second asymmetry, i.e. the fact that the first asymmetry is found only
in the categorially hybrid nominal indicatives but not in the fully
nominal subjunctives.
2.3.2.
Subjunctive adjunct clauses with nominal Agr
Subjunctive nominal adjunct clauses contrast with indicative
nominalized adjunct clauses with respect to their subjects: those
subjects are in the Genitive, just as they are in corresponding
argument clauses:
(23) [[Sen
-in
yemek piflir -me -n ] için ] ben
you(SG) -GEN food cook -NFN -2.SG for
I
ev
-de
kal-dı
-m
house -LOC go -PAST -1.SG
‘I stayed at home so that you should cook (for you to cook).’
The Genitive subject here contrasts with the corresponding
Nominative subjects in the examples (18) through (22), where
nominal indicatives were exemplified as adjuncts. The contrast
between (23) and (18) is particularly instructive in this regard, as the
same postposition, i.e. için, shows up in both (albeit with different
semantics, due to the different factivity and Mood differences
between the embedded clauses); the nominal Agr morphology is the
same in both, as well. Yet, the subject of the embedded indicative
clause in (18) is in the Nominative (i.e. default) case, while the
154
Jaklin Kornfilt
subject of the embedded subjunctive clause is in the Genitive (i.e.
genuine nominal subject) case in (23).
I propose that the reason for this contrast is the one mentioned
earlier, e.g. in the introduction: the nominal Agr element is licensed
via the categorially matching nominal features within its own clause
in nominal subjunctive clauses such as in (23). I have argued in
subsection 2.1.2. that these clauses are indeed homogeneously nominal, and that especially their TAM morphology is [+N, -V], thus
“harmonizing” with the corresponding feature values of the nominal
Agr morphology. As a consequence, the nominal Agr in nominal subjunctives always licenses genuine (nominal) subject Case, i.e. Genitive, irrespective of the argument or adjunct status of the clause. In
other words, an Agr licensed categorially within its clause does not
need further licensing via any sort of indexation, thematic or otherwise; this is why nominal subjunctive clauses don’t exhibit sensitivity to the adjunct versus argument distinction with respect to subject
Case.
In contrast, Agr is not categorially licensed clause-internally in
nominalized indicative clauses. This is why it needs licensing via
indexation, as discussed in the previous subsection, and why nominal
indicative clauses show sensitivity to their adjunct versus argument
status.
There is some independent evidence for my proposal that the lack
of sensitivity observed for nominal subjunctive clauses with respect
to the argument/adjunct asymmetry (due to the ability of its Agr to
license genuine nominal subject case irrespective to that asymmetry)
is made possible by the homogeneously nominal categorial features
of the domain headed by such nominal Agr. This evidence comes
from regular possessive phrases.
Possessive phrases are similar to nominalized clauses with
respect to the nominal Agr morphology on the head, i.e. on the
nominal with the semantics of “possessed”. Interestingly, the
specifier of such phrases (i.e. the nominal with the semantics of
“possessor”), which is the nominal that corresponds to the subject of
nominal phrases, bears Genitive marking, irrespective of the
argument or adjunct status of the entire possessive phrase. In the
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
155
following pair of examples, the possessive phrase is an argument in
(24), and an adjunct in (25). Please note that the possessor, Ali, is
marked with the Genitive in both instances:
(24) Hasan [Ali -nin
kitab-ın ] -ı
Hasan Ali -GEN book-3.SG -ACC
‘Hasan read Ali’s book.’
oku -du
read -PAST
(25) Hasan kitab -ı
[[Ali -nin
kız
-ı ] için]
Hasan book -ACC Ali -GEN daughter -3.SG for
al -dı
buy -PAST
‘Hasan bought the book for Ali’s daughter.’
This fact is exactly as predicted by the approach outlined above.
The nominal Agr morphology is licensed by the nominal features
within its own phrase; obviously, the nominal head of a possessive
phrase is unambiguously and fully nominal. Therefore, such Agr
morphology does not need any other licensing and is thus insensitive
to any indexing that would originate from a thematic or predicational
indexer.
In the following section, I discuss adjunct clauses without an overt
Agr element and show that such clauses independently motivate the
assumption of a default Case mechanism for subjects.
2.3.3.
Adjunct clauses without any Agr
Typically, adjunct clauses that lack overt Agr morphology on their
predicates also don’t have an overt subject; these embedded subjects
have the properties of PRO. 14 Note that in the following two
examples with PRO-subjects, the subject of the adjunct clause takes
on the reference of the overt subject in the main clause obligatorily:
156
Jaklin Kornfilt
(26) a.Oyai dün
bütün gün çal›fl -t›.
Oya yesterday all
day work -PAST
[PROj/*i makale-yi
yaz -ar
-ken ]
article -ACC write -PRES.PART -‘while’
Ahmetj ›sl›k
çal -›yor -du
Ahmet whistle play -PROG -PAST
‘While writing the article, Ahmet was whistling.’
(The only person writing the article can be Ahmet, even
though Oya was mentioned in the discourse, and would be
pragmatically the likelier antecedent for PRO in this
discourse.)
b. [PROi makale-yi
yaz -ar
-ken ]
article -ACC write -PRES.PART -‘while’
beni ›sl›k
çal -aca¤
-›m
I
whistle play -FUT
-1.SG
‘While (I will be) writing the article, I will be whistling.’
In contrast, the pro-subject in corresponding clauses with overt
Agr morphology may also take on the reference of other antecedents:
(27) Oyai çok özverili bir insan.[[proi/j dün
yemek
Oya very selfless a person
yesterday food
piflir -di¤-i ] için ] Ahmetj konser -e
cook-FN-3.SG because Ahmet concert-DAT
gid -ebil -di
go -ABIL -PAST
‘Oya is a very selfless person. Because she/he cooked
yesterday, Ahmet was able to go to the concert.’
Although syntactically, Ahmet is a closer antecedent to the prosubject, the discourse-antecedent Oya is pragmatically the likelier
antecedent and is thus the preferred indexer. (Without the first
sentence about Oya, the indexer of pro is, of course, Ahmet.)
For our purposes, these sentences establish the difference between
PRO- and pro-subjects. Note, at the same time, that PRO-subjects
co-occur with predicates that lack overt Agr, while pro-subjects need
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
157
overt Agr to be licensed and identified. (Kornfilt 1996b discusses
additional criteria to distinguish these two empty categories in Turkish.)
An interesting observation about Agr-less adjunct clauses is that
an overt subject can show up in the position of PRO in such examples:
(28) [Meral makale -yi
yaz -ar -ken ] ben ›sl›k
Meral article -ACC write-AOR -‘while’ I
whistle
çal -›yor -du
-m
play -PROG -PAST -1.SG
‘While Meral (was) writing the article, I was whistling.’
Similar facts are found with other morphologies found in such
tenseless adjunct clauses, as well:
(29) [sen
konser -e
gid -ince ] ben ev
-e
you(SG) concert-DAT go -‘when’ I
home -DAT
dön -dü
-m
return -PAST -1.SG
‘When you went to the concert, I returned home.’
(30) [sen
konser -e
gid -eli ] befl saat ol -du
you(SG) concert-DAT go -‘since’ five hour be -PAST
‘It’s been five hours since you went to the concert.’
The factive nominalization morpheme -DIK can, albeit infrequently, also serve as part of the predicate of such an adjunct
clause with either a PRO-subject or an overt subject, when followed
(in its Agr-less form) by the locative morpheme -DA:
(31) a.[PRO her gel -dik-te ] Ali ben -im -le
each come -FN-LOCAli I -GEN -with
kavga ed -er
quarrel do -AOR
‘Ali quarrels with me every time [he] come[s].’
158
Jaklin Kornfilt
b. [sen
her gel -dik -te ] Ali ben -im -le
you(SG) each come -FN-LOC Ali I -GEN -with
kavga ed -er
quarrel do -AOR
‘Ali quarrels with me every time you come.’
(Adapted from Lewis 1967: 183)
The interesting question that arises here is: how can it be that both
PRO-subjects and overt subjects are possible here? We saw earlier
that Agr-less infinitival clauses that are arguments (rather than
adjuncts) allow only PRO-subjects, while nominalized clauses with
overt Agr allow only overt (or pro-) subjects. In other words, for
argument clauses, PRO- and overt subjects are in complementary
distribution. However, this complementary distribution obviously
breaks down for adjunct clauses. In other words, PRO- and overt
subjects are in free variation for Agr-less adjunct clauses.
In order to explain this observation, we have to address the basic
issue of how overt subjects receive Case in these adjunct clauses that
lack overt Agr.
My proposal is that such Case is due to a mechanism of default
Case that applies as a last resort. In other words, when no Case
licenser is available for an overt subject, this last resort mechanism
applies. Note that in these Agr-less adjunct clauses, there indeed is
no Case licenser for an overt subject: there is neither overt Agr as
such a licenser, nor Tense (even if we had not ruled out Tense
previously in such capacity), as these clauses have no independent
tense and take on the tense interpretation of the root clause.
I shall come back to the issue of default Case; at present, it is
sufficient to say that such Agr-less clauses with overt subjects that do
not bear genuine, licensed subject Case establish the necessity of
default Case in Turkish. Given that the grammar of the language
needs this mechanism, default Case can also be appealed to when
accounting for the overt subjects in categorially hybrid clauses that
are adjuncts and which do have overt Agr. The common denominator
of both types of clauses, i.e. hybrid clauses with and without overt
Agr, is that they are adjuncts, i.e. that they lack primary θ−roles.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
159
Thus, I propose that there is a correlation between that lack and the
necessity of default subject Case in both types of clauses.
I now turn to an overall account of licensed subject Case in
Turkish.
3.
An account of subject Case
3.1. A sketch of a proposal, and one previous proposal
In the previous discussion, I have proposed that: 1. there is one single
licensed subject Case (with the possibility of default Case when there
is no licenser available; necessary constraints on default Case shall
be discussed later); I further claimed that this single subject Case
may have different morphological realizations (in Turkish, those
would be Nominative and Genitive); 2. that the licenser of the
genuine, licensed subject Case is the overt Agr morphology, and that
3. the Agr morphology has to be licensed itself in order to function as
a licit subject Case licenser.
The correlations between overt Agr of both categorial types and
the corresponding subject Case pointed out so far show us that the
first two claims above are convincing. What about the third claim?
In the Minimalist Program, elements that don’t have semantic
features (“interpretable features”), or else which have them
redundantly, are imperfections (cf. Chomsky 2002). Agr is one such
element, since whatever semantic features it has are already
contained in the co-indexed subject DP. The importance of such an
element—and of the syntactic position AGR in which the Agr
morpheme is situated—has therefore to be motivated. This is what I
have tried to establish in this paper so far— i.e. I have ruled out
alternative sources for licensed subject Case, thus motivating the
existence of Agr as a subject Case licenser.
In the same spirit as in the Minimalist Program, I would argue that
because an entity like AGR (and its corresponding morphology, i.e.
Agr) with its uninterpretable features is undesirable in general, its
existence must be licensed all the more, when its categorial features
160
Jaklin Kornfilt
are in conflict with those of its syntactic environment. Thus, I have
proposed a primary source of licensing via matching categorial
features; where there is categorial mismatch, I have proposed
licensing via referential indexing (in Rizzi’s sense). This, in turn, is
made possible either via thematic indexing, as we have seen so far,
or via predicational indexing, as we shall see later in the paper.
The idea that an Agr element, categorially mismatched locally
within its own clause, needs to be licensed from the outside, has a
predecessor, albeit not an identical one. Raposo (1987) proposes for
inflected infinitives in European Portuguese (EP) the following
generalization: nominal Agr needs Case itself. I offer here one
citation to this effect:
“...Agreement (Agr) in [the inflected infinitive’s] Infl node must
be Case-marked, if it is to assign nominative Case to the subject of
its clause.” (Raposo 1987: 85.)
Raposo mentions the nominal nature of Agr in these instances as a
motivating factor for his claim, just presented, that such Agr has to
be “Case-marked” from outside in order to have its own “Caseassignment” potential be activated. But why should a nominal Agr be
any less able to license subject Case than a verbal Agr? Raposo
analyzes inflected infinitives in EP as CPs; in such a syntactic
domain, a nominal Agr would indeed cause conflict of categorial
features and thus would need licensing itself, if we look at the EP
facts from the perspective of the approach I have suggested.
The licensing of the nominal Agr, Raposo proposes, takes place
through the Case on the whole infinitival clause, and via subsequent
percolation of that Case down to the nominal Agr that heads the
inflected infinitival, and which, in Raposo’s account, has risen to the
C-head of the CP.
It is important to note that the Case “assigned” to the overt subject
in these EP inflected infinitives is not the same as the Case on the
“switched on” Agr in most instances: while the overt subject bears
subject Case (in EP, this is the Nominative, despite the syntactically
nominal nature of Agr15), the external Case on the CP (and thus on its
Agr-head) is, in most instances, the Accusative (abstracting away
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
161
from inflected infinitives as sentential subjects); this is illustrated by
the following example:
(32) Eu lamento [os deputados ter
-em trabalhado pouco]
‘I regret the deputies to-have-Agr worked
little.’
(Raposo 1987: 87, his [7]a.)
In other words, the subject Case licensing mechanism proposed
for EP by Raposo is not Case transmission, as suggested for some
English gerunds in Reuland (1983). Instead, we have here an Agr,
licensed by any Case, in turn licensing subject Case.
Given that no Case transmission takes place here, the question
arises as to why the licensing of Agr as a Case licenser should be due
to an external Case, and whether other ways of such external
licensing of Agr might be conceivable.
In the following sections, I shall show that at least for Turkish,
external Case as the factor that activates an Agr element (i.e. an Agr
not activated internally within a clause or a phrase) does not work.
Therefore, a different external factor is needed, and I have proposed
indexation by a primary θ−role (and shall add indexation by
predication) as such a factor.
Note, however, that Raposo’s and my proposals are motivated by
a similar way of thinking: where Agr is not “legitimate” within its
own local domain, it must get legitimized by virtue of heading a
syntactic domain which, in turn, is a necessary, even obligatory,
constituent in its own domain. In Turkish, such a constituent would
be an argument of a verb or of a noun, as opposed to an adjunct of a
verb.
We shall see that adjunct clauses of nouns, i.e. modifier clauses in
relative clause (RC) constructions (as opposed to adjuncts of verbs)
are also treated as “necessary” constituents in Turkish. This might be
a parametric dimension along which languages might differ and
whose investigation I leave for future research.
Returning to a formalization of the general ideas just discussed,
the “necessary” constituents are, I propose, indexed: either by a
(primary) θ−role for argument clauses, or by a predicational index,
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Jaklin Kornfilt
for the modifying clauses in RCs. This index percolates down to the
Agr-head, thus activating it as a subject Case licenser. 16
I now turn to showing that in Turkish, it isn’t the Case on the Agr
that activates it as a subject Case licenser.
3.2 Problems with licensing of Turkish Agr via Case
Three types of problems have to be acknowledged that a Case-based
account of the kind proposed by Raposo for EP would have to face
with respect to subject Case in Turkish:
3.2.1.
Instances of licensed nominal Agr without structural Case
Turkish categorially hybrid indicative clauses appear in nouncomplement constructions:
(33) [Ali-nin i [proi aile
-sin ] -i
Ali-GEN
family -3.SG -ACC
terket -ti¤ -i ] söylenti -si
abandon-FN-3.SG rumor -CMPM
‘the rumor that Ali abandoned his family’
A noun does not check the Case of its complement (or at least not
structural Case); in this respect, it is different from either verbs or
adpositions. This is also shown here by the fact that there is no overt
Case on the nominalized complement clause of the noun. But, just
like a verb, a noun assigns primary θ−roles. This explains the
Genitive on the subject of the categorially hybrid clausal Ncomplements. At the same time, such examples motivate the
approach to licensed subject Case proposed here, i.e. one as based on
indexation via primary θ−roles, and against an approach based on
licensing of Agr via Case on that element.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
3.2.2.
163
Instances of licensed verbal Agr without structural Case
Further motivation for Agr as the subject Case licenser, as well as for
its own licensing via θ−role-based indexation, is offered by the
existence of tensed complement clauses of nouns:
(34) [[beni
[proi aile
-m ] -i
I [NOM]
family -1.SG -ACC
terket
-ti
-m ] söylenti -si
]
abandon -PAST-1.SG rumor -CMPM
‘the rumor that I abandoned my family’
Given the fully verbal, tensed nature of the noun-complement
clause, it is clear that neither the clause nor its (verbal) Agr-head
receive any Case from the external noun. Nevertheless, the overt
subject of that clause has subject Case, namely Nominative. This
shows that the local, verbal Agr element is licensed as a subject Case
licenser; given the verbal nature of that local Agr, the appropriate
subject Case is the Nominative, and this is what we find here.
These facts about noun-complement clauses are problematic for
any account like Raposo’s, where Agr as a licenser is activated by
external Case on that Agr.
3.2.3.
Instances of unlicensed nominal Agr with adpositional Case
Another type of problem is posed by the existence of categorially
hybrid clauses as complements of postpositions. Such examples were
discussed previously, in section 2.3.1., where we saw that in such
constructions, the subject does not receive the expected subject Case,
despite the existence of an Agr element. (See examples [18] through
[22] in that section.) Note that in such examples, postpositions do
assign Case to their complement clauses, and thus to the Agr element
heading such clauses. This is especially obvious in examples (19)
through (22), where the clause bears overt Case, irrespective of the
presence or absence of an overt postposition. Thus, (clause-)external
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Jaklin Kornfilt
Case on Agr and the clause that it heads does not license that Agr as
a subject Case marker, making default Case necessary.
On the other hand, the common denominator between all the
examples in 2.3.1. (i.e. [18] through [22]) is the fact that the
categorially hybrid clauses do not bear any primary θ−role. I
therefore submit that the account I have proposed here is
corroborated by these examples, while a Case-based account is
refuted by them.
4.
An additional subject Case licensing mechanism: Indexation
by predication in headed operator-variable constructions
4.1. Overtly headed relative clauses
Agr has an additional option of receiving a “referential” index (cf.
Rizzi 1994), if θ-role assignment is not an option. This is through
predication. Relevant examples are relative clauses (overtly headed
as well as Free Relatives) and comparatives (which, formally, are
similar to Free Relatives in Turkish).
In order to show that a (somewhat) separate treatment of RCs is
necessary, I would first like to demonstrate that the structure of RCs
is different from that of noun-complement constructions just
discussed.
First, I would like to show that the modifying clause in RCs is an
adjunct of the head, not a complement of the head:
(35) [Ali-nin
geçen gün dükkân -dan al -d›¤-› ] bu
Ali -GEN past day shop -ABL buy -FN-3.SG this
flahane
vazo
magnificent vase
‘this magnificent vase which Ali bought at the store the other
day’
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
165
Note that the modifying clause precedes the demonstrative, and
compare this property to a corresponding clause as a complement of
a head noun:
(36) flu [[Ali -nini [proi aile
-sin ] -i
that Ali -GEN
family -3.SG -ACC
terket -ti¤ -i ] söylenti -si
]
abandon -FN -3.SG rumor -CMPM
‘that rumor that Ali abandoned his family’
Here, the clause follows the demonstrative. Note that the order
found in RCs is not possible in noun-complement constructions:
(37) *[Ali -nini [proi aile
-sin ] -i
Ali -GEN
family -3.SG -ACC
terket
-ti¤ -i ] flu
söylenti -si
abandon -FN-3.SG that rumor -CMPM
Intended reading: ‘that rumor that Ali abandoned his family’
This shows that the modifying clause in RCs is merged higher
than the corresponding clause in noun-complement constructions.
Thus, these examples motivate the analysis of the noun-complement
clauses in a way appropriate to their label, i.e. the clause is the
complement of the noun and is therefore merged closer to that noun
as compared to the modifying clause in RCs which is an adjunct
rather than a complement of the head noun and is therefore merged
higher in the structure.
But if the modifying clause in RCs is not a complement of the
head noun, then it also does not receive a primary θ−role from that
noun, and thus the Agr heading the clause does not receive an
appropriate index. Yet, the subject of the clause does show up in the
appropriate subject Case, i.e. it is in the Genitive. This means that the
Agr is indexed, after all, but not via a marking based on a primary
θ−role. Instead, I suggest that the indexation needed is achieved via a
predication relation between the modifying clause and the head noun.
Early mention of such a predication rule in RCs and in Left
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Jaklin Kornfilt
Dislocation constructions can be found in Chomsky (1977), where
such a rule is taken to express a general notion of “aboutness” (cf.
Chomsky 1977: 81).
The same predication relation, I suggest, holds in the following
two examples:
(38) a. the [ sad ] man
b.the man [who[ is sad]]
In turn, this predication relation is, in a sense, similar to that we
find within a clause between a predicate, i.e. a VP (or an I’) and the
subject:
(39) a. The man [coughed]
b.The man [is sad ]
There is some recent work in which at least some instantiations of
this kind of predication is related to θ−role assignment, as in
Williams (1994). There, predication between a predicate and a
subject as well as predication between a nominal head and its
adjectival modifier is taken to involve θ−role assignment.
It is interesting to see an approach where the relationship between
a modifier (i.e. an adjunct) of a nominal head and that head (as in
[38]a.) is viewed as one involving θ−role assignment. If this view is
on the right track, then we have exactly the type of natural class of
constructions that we have been aiming for in this paper:
complements of verbs and of nouns, along with (for Williams, only
adjectival) adjuncts of nouns, to the exclusion of adjuncts of verbs.
The task that remains is to also introduce relative clause modifiers
into that natural class. Williams (1994) excludes them, for reasons
that it would take us too far afield to discuss here. I would like to
suggest that modifier clauses of nominal heads should have the same
relationship to those heads as modifier adjectives; in other words, if
there is a predication relationship between the modifier and the head
in (38)a. i.e. a relationship based on θ−role assignment, in
accordance with the suggestions in Williams 1994, then the same
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
167
relationship should also hold between the modifying clause and the
head in (38)b. As a matter of fact, the traditional labelling of such
modifier clauses as adjective clauses goes along with this idea.
The similarity between these two kinds of noun modification is
even more obvious in other languages, Turkish being one of them:
(40) a. [üzgün] adam
sad
man
‘the sad man’
b. [[ei üzgün ol -an
] Opi] adami
sad
be -REL.PART
man
‘the man who is sad’
If my suggestion is correct, there is predication between modifier
and nominal head in both of (40) a. and b., and in both of them
(following Williams 1994 at least in spirit), this predication is based
on θ −role assignment. I further suggest that this sort of θ−role
assignment is “primary” in a sense similar to Rizzi’s primary
θ−roles, because it restricts the reference of the DP-head; therefore,
the indexation that encodes the predication relationship is a
“referential” one. This is where we find the ultimate similarity
between those instances where an argument clause receives a
“referential” index, namely via a primary θ−role, and those instances
where an adjunct clause likewise receives a referential index via
predication, the latter also based on (primary) θ−role assignment
between head and modifier.
The examples of RCs just discussed have subject targets and thus
don’t possess subjects in need of Case. But note that once we insure
such indexation on the modifier clause in an RC, the account
developed here for subject Case applies to those RCs that do have a
subject, i.e. in RCs whose target is a non-subject, as the one in (35),
repeated here for convenience as (41):
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Jaklin Kornfilt
(41) [Ali-nin
geçen gün dükkân -dan al -d›¤ -› ]j
Ali-GEN past day shop -ABL buy -FN17 -3.SG
[bu flahane
vazo]j
this magnificent vase
‘this magnificent vase which Ali bought at the store the other
day’
I have encoded the predication relation at issue via indexation.
The index on the modifying clause would, as outlined earlier for
argument clauses, percolate down to the (nominal) Agr element
which is not licensed internal to the clause, as it conflicts with the
“verbal” features of the predicate in this categorially hybrid clause.
Agr, now licensed via its predication index, licenses the appropriate
subject Case on the subject; due to the nominal nature of this Agr,
subject Case is realized as the Genitive.
A similar account would hold for comparative constructions
whose head would be an overt or covert quantificational phrase.
Before turning to those and to Free Relatives, I would like to point
out that indexation between modifying clause and nominal head is a
necessary but not sufficient condition for genuine, licensed subject
Case to be realized; the presence of overt Agr is crucial. To see this, I
show examples of nominalized irrealis relative clauses without an
Agr marker; relative clauses with nominal future tense morphology
are such an example.
It is important to note that in such instances, no overt subject is
possible any longer; the only possible subject is PRO:
(42) a.[[[PRO san
-a
ei ver -ecek] Opi] bir
you(sg.)-DAT give -FUTN
a
vazo] bul -a
-m› -yor
-um
vase find -NegABIL -NEG -PROG -1.SG
‘I am unable to find a vase to give you.’
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
169
b. *[[[ben
/ben -im
san
-a
ei
I [NOM] / I -GEN you(sg.) -DAT
ver -ecek] Opi] bir vazo]
give -FUTN
a vase
bul -a
-m› -yor
-um
find-NegABIL -NEG -PROG -1.SG
Intended reading: ‘I am unable to find a vase for me to give
you.’
Whether the overt subject is in the Nominative or in the Genitive,
the last example remains ungrammatical in the absence of Agr.
The ungrammatical example can be rescued by having the future
tense in the categorially hybrid modifying clause be followed by
nominal Agr:
(43) [[[Ben-im
san
-a
ei ver -ece¤ -im ] Opi]
I -GEN you(sg.) -DAT give -FUTN-1.SG
bir vazo] -yu
dün
bul -du
-m
a vase -ACC yesterday find-PAST -1.SG
‘I found yesterday a vase I’ll give you.’
These sets of examples offer a clear illustration of the significant
role of Agr in the licensing of overt subjects, and we find the same
correlation in relative clauses between Agr and overt subjects with licensed subject Case as we found in argument hybrid clauses; when
Agr is present, we find overt subjects with licensed subject Case;
when Agr is absent, only PRO is possible as a subject.
4.2. Indicative adjunct clauses with Genitive subjects: Free relatives
and comparatives
Note that nominalized indicative clausal postpositional complements
do exist whose subjects are carriers of Genitive, i.e. of the genuine
nominal subject Case:
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Jaklin Kornfilt
(44) [[Ayfle -nin duy -du¤ -un ] -a
göre
] Sare
Ayfle-GEN hear -FN -3.SG -DAT according to Sare
deprem
-de
vefat et -mifl
earthquake -LOC death do -REP.PAST
‘According to what Ayfle heard, Sare died in the earthquake.’
(45) Piyanist bu parça -y› [[Pollini -nin
pianist this piece -ACC Pollini -GEN
göster -di¤ -i ] gibi] çal -d›
show -FN -3.SG like play -PAST
‘The pianist played this piece like Pollini showed
(i.e. in the way in which P. showed it to be played).’
(46) Ali [[baba -s›n -›n
iste -di¤ -i ] kadar ]
Ali father -3.SG -GEN want -FN -3.SG as-much-as
baflar› -l›
ol
-a
-ma -m›fl
success -with become -NegABIL -NEG -REP.PAST
‘(It is said that) Ali wasn’t able to become as successful as his
father wanted.’
Note that the subjects of the nominalized factive clausal complements of the postpositions is in the Genitive rather than in the default
Nominative Case, in contrast with what we saw in (apparently)
similar adjunct clauses in section 2.3.1. What is the difference?
All of the postpositions in the last three examples have either
comparative semantics, or else the construction can be interpreted as
a (free) RC. More specifically, I suggest that (44) and (45) are Free
Relatives (FRs), while (46) is a comparative construction.
Among a number of competing analyses for comparatives, one
widely accepted analysis has been to view comparative constructions
as involving an operator, in a sense similar to relative clauses (cf.
Bresnan 1973 and 1975; for an account of Turkish comparatives
along these lines, cf. Knecht 1976). The translations of these last
three examples are suggestive: (44), a Free Relative: ‘According to
what (i.e. on the basis of the things that) Ayfle heard, ...’; (45),
another Free Relative: ‘The pianist played this piece like the way
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
171
which Pollini showed’; (46), a comparative construction: ‘Ali wasn’t
successful as much as, i.e. to the extent that his father wished’. Note
also that similar facts hold for other comparatives: -DAn fazla ‘more
than’, -DAn az ‘less than’ etc.; due to space limitations I shall not
illustrate those.
It is particularly interesting to compare (44) with (19), since the
same postposition (göre) is used in both, yet the subject of the
postposition’s clausal object is bare in (19), but has Genitive Case in
(44). The reason is, I claim, that we have a Free Relative in
(44)—and therefore crucially—an operator and a (phonologically
empty) head18, leading to the presence of the Genitive. In (19), there
is no reason to assume the presence of an operator, nor that of a
nominal head. The most appropriate translation of the postposition
göre in (19) is ‘given that’, rather than ‘according to X’, as in (44).
All we have in (19) is the clausal complement within a Postpositional
Phrase, with the whole PP being an adjunct of the matrix
verb—hence the lack of Genitive, despite nominal, rich Agr; instead,
the default, bare Case is found on the subject.
Two common denominators of relative clauses and comparatives
are the presence of an operator and the presence of a head of the
whole construction. I suggest that it is a predication relationship
between the head and the clause which activates the Agr heading the
clause (by co-indexing the external nominal or quantifier phrase
head of the construction with the clause, and with inheritance of the
index on the clause by the nominal Agr- head of the clause).
In other words, what we see here is exactly the same kind of
“activation” of nominal Agr in categorially hybrid indicative clauses
which we observed in overtly headed relative clauses and which we
accounted for by proposing referential indexation on the nominal
Agr, based on predication between the head of the RC and the
modifying clause. This predication is made possible by the moved
operator (relative or comparative), which turns the clause into an
“open” clause. The only difference is that here, the respective heads
of the constructions are phonologically empty. The Genitive marking
on the subjects is therefore just as expected. 19
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Jaklin Kornfilt
From a typological perspective, it is interesting to note that a
somewhat similar proposal has been made in the literature for
Japanese. Watanabe (1996) proposes to analyze some of the
Japanese “Ga-No conversion” contexts as relative clauses and
comparative constructions, and he claims that the operator movement
in such constructions makes Genitive marking on the subject
possible.
While this is a different account from mine, as it does not appeal
to predication and to referential indexing, it is nonetheless very
suggestive that, when observed from a particular perspective,
Japanese and Turkish should have rather similar phenomena. It is
possible that indexation via predication, with concomitant subject
Case licensing, is a particular parameter, while indexation via θmarking is another one. Japanese might have a positive value for the
first, European Portuguese for the second, and Turkish for both.
Clearly, this is a fascinating area for further research.
5.
Preliminary conclusions
My account has been based on the following proposals: 1. Genuine
subject Case is licensed by Agr which is itself licensed. 2. The
primary type of Agr-licensing is via matching categorial feature in
the local domain. In absence of this licensing, we may have: 3.
Licensing by (referential) indexation, instantiated by either primary
θ-role marking or by predication (the latter also based on θ-role
assignment, if Williams 1994 is correct). 4. The type of subject Case
is determined by the category of the licensing Agr (Nominative for
verbal Agr and Genitive for nominal Agr). 5. Where Agr is absent, or
where it is not licensed as a subject Case licenser, no subject Case is
licensed, even where conditions for indexation are met otherwise.
Overt subjects receive default Case instead.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
6.
173
What is the Case of the non-Genitive subjects in adjunct
clauses?
The question now arises about the nature of the default Case I have
proposed. Is this simply a morpho-phonologically unrealized general
Case, or is it the Nominative? Given that the Nominative in Turkish
has no overt realization, this is a legitimate query. I shall conclude
that the default Case is indeed the Nominative.
There is some independent evidence for my conclusion. One type
of such evidence is provided by Left-Dislocation constructions, and
especially in non-Case matched contexts.
In Left-Dislocation constructions, the dislocated element can
either exhibit the same Case as the corresponding constituent in the
clause, or the default Case, i.e. it can be bare (in other words, I am
claiming that the “bare” dislocated constituent is in the Nominative);
but it cannot be in the Accusative, if the corresponding constituent in
the clause is not Accusative:
(47) Ali (-yi)
mi? Ben kendisin-i
Ali (-ACC) Y/N I
himself -ACC
üç ay
-d›r gör -me -di
-m
three month -since see -NEG -PAST -1.SG
‘(About) Ali, I haven’t seem him for (the last) three months.’
(48) Ali (*-yi)
mi? Ben kendisin-den çok
Ali (-ACC) Y/N I
himself -ABL very
kork -ar -›m
fear -AOR -1.SG
‘(About) Ali, I am very much afraid of him.’
This is in contrast to English, where the default Case appears to
be Accusative:
(49) a. Who’s there?—It’s me.
b.Who’s there?—*It’s I.20
174
Jaklin Kornfilt
Chomsky (2001) offers a typology of Case which is, in part, similar to his older proposals (cf. Chomsky 1981) in including structural
and inherent Case. But an important addition is the notion of default
Case, i.e. Case licensed not by any particular licenser, but rather
assigned independently of such licensing relationships. Examples
like those in (49) are offered as illustrations of this notion. 21 My
proposal to analyze the dislocated subjects in (47) and (48) (where
they are phonologically “bare”) as well as the “bare” subjects of
adjuncts without operators and nominal heads (i.e. overt subjects
which I have claimed bear default Case) as being in the Nominative
Case accords well with this recent approach. The basic default Case
assignment/checking mechanism would be the same in English and
Turkish; the only difference would be in the actual morphological
realization of the default Case: Accusative in English, Nominative in
Turkish. The fact that Nominative is morphologically realized as a
zero morpheme makes it, I suggest, even more plausible as a default
Case.
Another source of missing overt Case marking on nominals is
lack of specificity: a non-specific nominal does not bear the expected
structural Case morpheme (i.e. Accusative or Genitive). This phenomenon has been discussed in the literature; discussion and further
sources can be found in Enç (1991), Dede (1986), Tura (1986), Erguvanl›-Taylan (1984), as well as Kornfilt (1984) and (1995a). Such
non-specific, morphologically “bare” nominals must usually be immediately pre-verbal; they cannot scramble away from that position,
although Turkish is otherwise rather word-order free. I will illustrate
with Genitive subjects and their “bare”, non-specific counterparts:
(50) [Araba -n›n yol -dan geç -ti¤ -in ] -i
car
-GEN road -ABL pass -FN-3.SG -ACC
gör -dü
-m.
see -PAST -1.SG
‘I saw that the car went by on the road.’
In this example, we find the Genitive subject in its canonical, sentence-initial position. A corresponding non-specific subject, “bare”
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
175
morphologically, cannot show up in this canonical subject position;
instead, it must be in immediate pre-verbal position:
(51) a.[yol -dan bir araba geç -ti¤ -in ] -i
road -ABL a car
pass -FN-3.SG -ACC
gör -dü
-m.
see -PAST -1.SG
‘I saw that a car (non-specific, non-referential) went by on
the road.’ (The subject may be focussed, but it does not have
to be.)
b.*[bir araba yol -dan geç -ti¤ -in ] -i
a
car
road -ABL pass -FN-3.SG -ACC
gör -dü
-m.
see -PAST -1.SG
Intended reading: ‘I saw that a car (non-specific, nonreferential) went by on the road.’
Similar facts hold in existentials—this is expected, as the
“semantic” subjects of existentials are obviously non-specific:
(51) c.[Garaj -da
befl araba ol -du¤ -un ] -u
garage-LOC five car
be -FN -3.SG -ACC
bil -iyor
-um
know -PRSPROG -1.SG
‘I know that there are five cars in the garden.’
d. *[Befl araba garaj -da ol -du¤ -un ] -u
five car
garage -LOC be -FN -3.SG -ACC
bil
-iyor
-um
know -PRSPROG -1.SG
Intended reading: ‘I know that there are five cars in the
garden.’
In all of these examples, we would expect the subjects to show up
in the Genitive, but they are “bare”, i.e. Case-less, instead.
176
Jaklin Kornfilt
Specific subjects which have, in my account, undergone default
Case marking (and are, morpho-phonologically speaking, “bare” as
well), behave differently with respect to word order, i.e. they can
show up in canonical subject position:
(52) [bu çocuk ev
-de
kal -d›¤-› ] için
Ali
this child house -LOC stay -FN-3.SG because Ali
ifl -e
gid -ebil -di.
work-DAT go -ABIL -PAST
‘Ali could go to work because this child stayed at home.’
In this respect, they pattern with Genitive subjects (cf. example
[50]) as well as with Nominative subjects:
(53) bu çocuk ev
-de
kal -d›
this child house -LOC stay -PAST
‘This child stayed at home.’
Conclusion: there are different types of morphologically bare
subjects. While bare non-specific subjects lack (structural) Case (in
all of the instances just observed, this would be the Genitive) and are,
probably due to that reason, fixed in their pre-verbal position,
subjects that are bare but carry default Nominative Case behave like
regular, genuinely Nominative subjects in verbal clauses as well as
their Genitive counterparts in nominal clauses. The issue of nonspecific, bare DPs is orthogonal to the issue of licensed versus
default Case. Any nominal phrase with non-lexical Case, irrespective
of the licensed or default nature of such Case, is (usually) realized in
a Case-less, bare form, as in (51) a. or c.
7.
When default Case may or may not be licensed
It is important to set up constraints on the application of default
Case; otherwise, default Case would apply in all instances when
licensed Case does not, and we would lose our explanations of, for
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
177
example, the complementary distribution between overt subjects and
PRO-subjects in infinitival clauses. I therefore start with those.
7.1. Infinitivals
I propose that the infinitival marker -mAK is actually -mA + K, with
-m A in M(ood) position, and -K in AGR (=Fin) position. This
proposal captures the morpho-phonological similarity between the
inflected nominal subjunctives (i.e. -mA + Agr) and the non-inflected
infinitivals (-mA+K). It further captures the fact that, semantically,
the Mood of infinitives and that of the inflected non-factives is
similar, i.e. they are both subjunctive. The analysis further accounts
for the fact that the verbs selecting for infinitival clauses are similar
to those that select subjunctive clauses.
Note that - K never expresses ϕ -features; I analyze it,
consequently, as [-Agr]. This licenses “null Case” (cf. Lasnik and
Chomsky 1991), i.e. the Case for licensing PRO, but not for
licensing overt DPs. Now, default Case is blocked: default Case can’t
apply when any Case (of the type that needs to be licensed by a
designated licenser) is actually licensed; this holds for “genuine
subject Case” (e.g. for the Genitive in nominal clauses) as well as for
the “null Case” of Lasnik and Chomsky, i.e. the Case special for
PRO-subjects. In this way, the complementary distribution between
overt subjects and PRO in infinitivals and the correlation of this
distribution with the presence versus absence of an appropriate Agr
element can be maintained.22, 23
I now turn to other syntactic domains that lack Agr—domains
where it is desirable to block application of default Case.
7.2. Other Agr-less domains
7.2.1.
In ECM-contexts
When discussing ECM-constructions, I suggested that there is no “Csystem” dominating the embedded clause. Hence there also is no
178
Jaklin Kornfilt
“Fin”-head (corresponding to AGR), not even negatively specified in
the way I just proposed for infinitives (cf. George and Kornfilt 1981,
where, for Turkish, Agr determines Finiteness). Consequently,
Accusative Case is licensed by the higher (ECM-) verb. We now
have a licensed Case; therefore, default Case is not needed and hence
not allowed, given that it is a strictly last resort mechanism.
7.2.2.
In adjunct domains headed by other forms than the
infinitive, but no Agr
We discussed adjunct clauses that lack Agr. The CP-status of such
clauses is unclear: extraction judgements are murky. I would like to
make the following assumption about such clauses: “Fin” exists in
their clausal architecture, but it is underspecified, as it lacks Agr
features. No other Case licensing is possible (the way it is in
infinitivals as well as in ECM-constructions). Consequently, default
Case applies, as a last resort.
7.3. Adjunct domains with Agr (and no predicational indexation)
No primary θ−role is assigned to this syntactic domain. If such a
domain is not involved in predication (i.e. if such an adjunct clause is
not a relative clause or if it is not a comparative), and if there also is
no clause-internal categorial congruence between Agr and the rest of
the predicate, Agr will not be licensed as a subject Case licenser. No
other licensing is possible. As a consequence, default Case applies as
a last resort.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
8.
179
Other treatments of the argument/adjunct asymmetry based
on subject Case
There have been very few discussions of the phenomena presented in
this paper. I am aware of two: one earlier and one later than my
work. I start with the earlier one.
8.1. Kennelly (1990)
She proposes that it is Tense that assigns Nominative to the subject
of a clause, rather than Agr. For her, indicative nominal markers (i.e.
the markers which I have glossed as F[active] N[ominal] and which I
analyzed as giving rise to categorially hybrid predicates) equal
Tense. She claims that external θ − role assignment blocks
Nominative assignment; motivated by the need to receive Case, the
subject raises to Spec, DP (i.e. the DP which Kennelly assumes is the
proper category of nominal clauses); in that higher position, the
subject receives Genitive, simply as a consequence of being the
specifier of a DP.
My main objection to this account is conceptual: why should thematic marking block regular subject Case? To my knowledge, this
phenomenon, i.e. θ-marking as blocking Case checking, has never
been observed or referred to for other languages and/or for other
phenomena. If anything, θ-marking either presupposes or makes
possible Case assignment/checking; this has been usually assumed
for inherent Case, for example.24 As for structural Case, I am not
aware of an instance where thematic marking blocks such Case. We
saw earlier that for Raposo, it is in “Case-marked”, i.e. largely θmarked, domains that a nominal clausal head is able to assign a
subject Case to its subject. Thus, the main proposal is not motivated
and goes against general assumptions and cross-linguistic facts.
In addition, the data Kennelly uses to bolster her analysis are
problematic and, to my knowledge, are not shared by many native
speakers. Due to space considerations, I shall not discuss her
proposals further, given the gravity of the conceptual problems with
180
Jaklin Kornfilt
it. It is probably due to these reasons, and I suspect especially due to
the problems with the data, that this proposal has seldom, if ever,
been referred to or used as the basis of later work. In any case, given
the problems with it that I just sketched, I think we can safely reject
this approach.
8.2. Aygen (2002)
This work postdates the presentation of my paper at the Leipzig
workshop related to this volume, as well as Kornfilt (2001) and
(2002). Given certain similarities between it and my work, as well as
between it and Lees (1965), I shall devote some space to a discussion
of its main aspects.
Aygen (2002) devotes attention to factive “nominalizations” only,
i.e. the type which I have claimed to be categorially hybrid.
She notes the main contrast between argument and adjunct factive
clauses in Turkish—the contrast that has been the focus of this paper,
too: the subjects of the former are Genitive, but those of the latter are
Nominative. Note that in terms of adjunct clauses, Aygen considers
only those that are marked with the factive marker, and which do
have Agr. (In other words, she does not discuss the Agr-less predicates in adjunct clauses; in terms of argument clauses as well as adjunct clauses, she considers only the factive nominal clauses, i.e.
there is no account of the non-factive, fully nominal clauses.) She
reasons that, given that Agr is present in both argument and adjunct
clauses, yet the Case on the subjects is different, Agr couldn’t possibly be involved in Case assignment to subjects.
This first premise is faulty; the conclusion does not necessarily
follow. As we have seen in the present paper, an approach is possible
where Agr (or any representation of ϕ-features) checks for subject
Case only in particular configurations. This is the reasoning I have
followed here. Raposo’s approach to European Portuguese takes this
same direction of reasoning, as well, as did Reuland’s (1983) earlier
one to English.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
181
However, although Aygen’s premise is faulty, it is nevertheless
true that the initial observation of the asymmetry just mentioned
might indeed be open to an approach that does not involve Agr at all
in subject Case assignment—especially if all the arguments in favor
of Agr in this respect (and which were discussed earlier in the present
paper) are not considered, due to a very narrow focus on just the
asymmetry at hand. I shall therefore briefly sketch Aygen’s account.
Aygen (2002) proposes that in Turkish, Case on the subject is
licensed by neither the [+Tense] features of T nor the ϕ-features of
AGR, but by a Case feature on C. This feature is responsible for
Genitive subjects: in relative clauses and in noun-complement
clauses, some agreement relationship between either the external
nominal head of such DPs or perhaps the D-head of the (high) DP
and the CP licenses a Genitive feature on the CP, and, indirectly, on
the subject of the CP.
Indicative argument clauses are claimed by Aygen to be nouncomplement clauses with an abstract nominal external head; adjunct
indicative clauses are claimed not to be externally headed.
To illustrate the latter claim, I use the following two examples;
(54) would be claimed to have a structure similar to (55):
(54) Ben[Hasan -›n
gel -di¤-in ] -i
I
Hasan -GEN come -FN-3.SG -ACC
bil -iyor
-um
know -PRSPROG -1.SG
‘I know that Hasan came.’
(55) Ben [[Hasan-›n
gel -di¤ -i ]
I
Hasan-GEN come -FN -3.SG
gerçe¤ -in ] -i
bil -iyor
-um
fact -CMPM-ACC know -PRSPROG -1.SG
‘I know the fact that Hasan came.’
The internal argument of the verb in (55) is a complex DP, i.e. a
noun-complement clause with its head noun. According to Aygen,
the Genitive is licensed by indirect agreement (C-N agreement) with
182
Jaklin Kornfilt
a nominal head. This indirect agreement is mediated via the CP, i.e.
the complement clause, which “agrees” with the head. She claims
that in (54), the object clause is actually an instance of a complex
DP, as well, with a phonologically unrealized nominal head. Hence,
the Genitive subject of that clause is similarly accounted for.
The idea that nominalized argument clauses are actually
complements of phonologically unrealized nominal heads was, to my
knowledge, first proposed in Lees (1965) for Turkish. There, both
factive and non-factive nominalizations were analyzed in this way,
although slightly different phrase structures were attributed to each
construction. This interesting proposal has some drawbacks,
however, and some of the criticism I shall raise against Aygen’s
approach to Genitive subjects in factives will concern Lees’s original
proposal, as well.
First, concerning Aygen’s proposals, i.e. the licensing of a
Genitive subject via an “agreement” relation between the C-head of a
complement (or, more generally, argument) CP and the nominal head
(or perhaps even the D-head) of a dominating DP: this proposal
would make sense for languages where “concord”, i.e. agreement
between the head noun (or D) and the complement in terms of certain
features (e.g. ϕ-features, or Case) obtains. Turkish, however, has no
concord. The features of a nominal head do not spread within the
DP—neither to complements, nor to modifiers.
The latter point is relevant with respect to relative clauses, where
the modifier clause is not a complement, but an adjunct of the nominal head. For those, too, it is not plausible to assume an “agreement”
relationship between the nominal head and the modifier clause, given
that no agreement between modifier and nominal head is ever found
elsewhere, either. Also, as the examples in the current study show,
there is no overt agreement between the nominal head and either a
complement clause (as in noun-complement constructions) or
between a nominal head and a modifier clause in a relative clause
construction.
Furthermore, while the proposal appears to unify relative clauses
and noun-complement clauses by positing this “agreement” relation
between a nominal head (overt or covert) and a (complement or
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
183
adjunct) clause, this unification is only apparent. Complements of
nouns are structurally in a different position from adjuncts of nouns,
as we saw in some detail earlier in the present paper; we saw that the
modifier clause in a relative clause is attached higher with respect to
the head than is a complement clause in a noun-complement construction. Thus, even if some sort of (abstract) “agreement” did
obtain, we would be looking at different “agreement” relations for
these two constructions.
One way out of this would be to posit raising of the subject to
Spec, DP of the higher DP, i.e. of the DP associated with the external
head N. While there is no evidence in Turkish for such raising in the
syntax, LF-raising is a possibility. For Japanese, this has been
proposed by Miyagawa (1993), with considerable explanatory
success. I shall offer some evidence to counter any analysis imputing
Genitive subject Case licensing directly to an external nominal for
Turkish, thus suggesting a property of grammar which is open to
parametric variation.
In addition to these conceptual and empirical problems, there are
problems concerning the evidence offered for parts of the analysis,
namely that nominalized complement clauses are externally headed
DPs. I shall consider only a few of those that are particularly clearcut and shall start by considering one type of such evidence, namely
scrambling to post-verbal positions.
8.2.1.
Problems for post-verbal scrambling
It is well-known that Turkish allows backgrounded constituents to
scramble to post-verbal positions. Such scrambling from out of an
embedded clause to the very end of the root clause is not too bad for
most speakers:
184
Jaklin Kornfilt
(56) ?[Hasan -›n
ti nihayet kaç
-t›¤ -›n ] -›
Hasan -GEN
finally escape -FN-3.SG -ACC
duy -du
-m
kar› -s›n -dani
hear -PAST -1.SG wife -3.SG -ABL
‘I heard that Hasan finally ran away from his wife.’
Given that the scrambled constituent has not attached to the
argument clause, but rather elsewhere (i.e. to the root clause), there is
no reason (other than subjacency, with mild effects) to predict
ungrammaticality, especially given that I am not assuming that the
argument clause has a nominal head.
This contrasts with overtly headed factive clauses. In such constructions, scrambling to root-final position deteriorates:
This contrasts with overtly headed factive clauses:
(57) ??/*[[Hasan -›n ti nihayet kaç
-t›¤ -› ]
Hasan -GEN finally escape -FN -3.SG
söylenti -sin ] -i
duy -du
-m
rumor -CMPM-ACC hear -PAST -1.SG
kar› -s›n -dani
wife -3.SG -ABL
‘I heard the rumor that Hasan finally ran away from his wife.’
Aygen would wrongly predict the same status of acceptability for
both, given that the host of scrambling in (56) is externally headed in
her approach, just as its counterpart is headed in (57). The clear
contrast between these two examples sheds further doubt on her
approach. (Note also that this last contrast is problematic for Lees
1965, as well.)
Similarly revealing are examples where the whole argument
clause has been scrambled to verb-final position in the root clause:
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
185
(58) tj Duy -du
-m
[[Hasan-›n
nihayet
hear -PAST -1.SG Hasan -GEN finally
kar› -s›n -dan kaç
-t›¤ -›n] -› ]j
wife -3.SG -ABL escape -FN -3.SG -ACC
‘I heard that Hasan finally ran away from his wife.’
In such examples, post-verbal scrambling of a constituent of the
subordinate clause is fine:
(59) tj Duy -du
-m
[[Hasan-›n ti nihayet
hear -PAST -1.SG Hasan-GEN
finally
kaç
-t›¤ -›n ] -› ]j kar› -s›n -dani
escape -FN -3.SG -ACC wife -3.SG -ABL
‘I heard that Hasan finally ran away from his wife.’
This is just as expected in any approach in which this type of subordinate clause is not headed. The fact that it is an argument clause is
not a problem, either, given that the clause is not in argument position, similarly to extraction facts in English, where a syntactic island
like a sentential subject does not exhibit island effects when it is extraposed, as shown in Ross (1967). (For discussion of Turkish facts
of postverbal scrambling out of subordinate clauses in different positions, cf. Kornfilt 1998.)
However, the full grammaticality of (59) for many speakers is a
serious problem for Aygen’s approach, which would predict it to be
ungrammatical, for the reasons already discussed: the scrambled
subordinate clause is, in that approach, headed. This problem is
compounded by the ill-formedness of corresponding examples where
there is an overt head:
186
Jaklin Kornfilt
(60) ??/*tj Duy -du
-m
[[Hasan-›n ti nihayet
hear -PAST -1.SG Hasan-GEN
finally
kaç -t›¤ -› ] söylenti -sin
-i ]j
escape -FN -3.SG rumor -CMPM-ACC
kar -s›n -dani
wife -3.SG -ABL
Intended reading: ‘I heard the rumor that Hasan finally ran
away from his wife.’
For Aygen, there should be no difference between the perfectly
fine (59) and the ill-formed (60); again, this is a problem for Lees
(1965), as well.
8.2.2.
Problems for distribution
Nominalized clauses can differ in their distribution according to
whether they have an external nominal head or not. Only two systematic differences (among a number of similar subcategorizational
differences) are considered here: factive versus non-factive nominalized clauses as objects versus subjects of psychological predicates.
1. Psychological predicates allow both the factive and the nonfactive nominalization types as complements, without any difference
in semantics.
(61) a.[Ali -nin
ev
-den kaç -ma -sın ] -a
Ali-GEN home -ABL flee -NFN -3.SG -DAT
üzül -dü
-m
sadden -PAST -1.SG
‘I was saddened at Ali’s running away from home.’
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
187
b.[Ali -nin
ev
-den kaç -tı¤ -ın ] -a
Ali-GEN home -ABL flee -FN-3.SG -DAT
üzül -dü
-m
sadden -PAST -1.SG
Same translation as in the previous example.
However, when an external noun shows up, only the factive
gerund is well-formed for factive semantics:
(62) a.??/*[[Ali -nin
ev
-den kaç -ma (-sı)]
Ali-GEN home -ABL flee -NFN -3.SG
söylenti -sin ] -e
üzül -dü
-m
rumor -CMPM -DAT sadden -PAST -1.SG
Intended reading: ‘I was saddened at the rumor of Ali’s
running away from home.’
b.[Ali -nin
ev
-den kaç -tı¤ -ı ]
Ali-GEN home -ABL flee -FN-3.SG
söylenti -sin
-e
üzül -dü
-m
rumor -CMPM-DAT sadden -PAST -1.SG
‘I was saddened at the rumor of Ali’s running away from
home.’
2. With the same type of predicates, only the non-factive
gerundive is well-formed as subject, despite indicative semantics;
however, when such a sentential subject is externally headed, only
the factive gerund is well-formed for indicative semantics:
(63) a.[Ali -nin
ev
-den kaç -ma -sı ] ben -i
Ali-GEN home -ABL flee -NFN -3.SG I -ACC
üz
-dü
sadden -PAST
‘Ali’s running away from home saddened me.’
188
Jaklin Kornfilt
b.*[Ali-nin
ev
-den kaç -tı¤ -ı ] ben -i
Ali-GEN home -ABL flee -FN-3.SG I -ACC
üz
-dü
sadden -PAST
Intended reading: ‘Ali’s running away from home saddened
me.’
(64) a.??/*[[Ali -nin
ev
-den kaç -ma (-sı)]
Ali-GEN home -ABL flee -NFN -3.SG
söylenti -si
] ben -i
üz
-dü
rumor -CMPM I -ACC sadden -PAST
Intended reading: ‘The rumor of Ali’s running away from
home saddened me.’
b.[[Ali -nin ev
-den kaç -tı¤ -ı ]
Ali -GEN home -ABL flee -FN-3.SG
söylenti -si
] ben -i
üz
-dü
rumor -CMPM I -ACC sadden -PAST
‘The rumor of Ali’s running away from home saddened me.’
Once again, these examples are problematic for both Aygen
(2002) and Lees (1965), as they clearly show that the distribution of
nominalized clauses with external nominal heads is different from
the distribution of their counterparts without external nominal heads.
8.2.3.
Existing correlations not captured
There are clear correlations that hold between subject Case types and
local Agr types. These hold at an observational level and are independent from any analytical bias: 1. Nominative subjects in argument
clauses (as well as root clauses) are possible only when verbal Agr is
present locally; 2. Genitive subjects in both argument and adjunct
clauses are possible only when nominal Agr is present locally. The
present study has offered illustrations of both generalizations. In both
instances, the presence or absence of external nouns is completely irrelevant. Therefore, any approach to the first asymmetry (i.e. the
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
189
argument-adjunct asymmetry in categorially hybrid nominalized
factive clauses) that rejects Agr as an important factor in determining
subject Case in Turkish is problematic, as is any approach that
attributes primary importance to an external nominal head as determining Genitive Case.
8.2.4.
Correlations posited that do not exist
Aygen (2002) claims that Genitive subjects are possible only when
the clause has an external nominal head, or else, where there is no
such overt head, where a nominal head is potentially possible,
because the position is there structurally.
In consequence, she claims that when a Genitive subject is not
possible, an external nominal head is not possible, either. Likewise,
when there is an external nominal head, the subject of the clause
should always be Genitive.
Both correlations are counterexemplified by a variety of constructions:
8.2.4.1. Indicative nominalized existentials with non-Genitive
subjects
I shall start with one type of construction which is discussed in
Aygen (2002) as furnishing support for her analysis (and as
supposedly being problematic for one aspect of my approach—an
aspect of the analysis which I had presented in Leipzig as well as in
Kornfilt 2001). This is the existential construction in nominalizations.
In Turkish existentials, the subject is to the immediate left of the
verb; in this respect, it is similar to other non-specific, non-referential
subjects which we saw earlier in this paper. Another similarity is that
such a subject cannot be marked with the Genitive; instead, it has to
be morphologically bare with respect to Case. While there is a
special existential verb in fully verbal clauses, the predicate in
190
Jaklin Kornfilt
nominalized existentials is the “light verb” ol ‘be’, which takes the
regular nominalization inflections we have discussed in this study.
An indicative nominalized existential follows as an illustration:
(65) Ali [bahçe -de
bir ejderha ol -du¤ -un ] -u
Ali garden-LOC a dragon be -FN -3.SG -ACC
duy -du
hear -PAST
‘Ali heard that there is a dragon in the garden.’
Aygen (2002) claims that, because the subject of existential
subjects in indicative nominalizations cannot be in the Genitive, such
clauses cannot show up with an external nominal head. She claims
that examples of the following sort are ungrammatical:
(66) Ali [bahçe -de
bir ejderha ol -du¤ -u ]
Ali garden -LOC a dragon be -FN -3.SG
söylenti -sin
-i
duy -du
rumor -CMPM-ACC hear -PAST
‘Ali heard the rumor that there is a dragon in the garden.’
Aygen (2002) further claims that the supposed ungrammaticality
of (66) is a problem for my approach. This is because she imputes to
that approach the prediction that the subject in (66) should be
Genitive: due to the θ-marking which the gerund clause would
receive from the external noun, the agreement would receive a
referential index and thus, so she claims, would license Genitive
subject Case, contrary to fact.
First of all, my approach does not make this prediction. The
nominal Agr in (66) does not AGREE with the subject, but rather
with an expletive pro. In other words, this is a “fake”, default Agr.
Secondly, both in the current study and in its precursor presentations,
I made clear that non-specific subjects (which include existential
subjects) cannot be morphologically marked for structural Case (and
thus for Genitive), even if such a structural Case should be licensed
syntactically.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
191
A third, and even more important, point is that Aygen’s idiolect
appears to be exceptional in rejecting examples like (66). Such
examples are perfect for me, and they are perfect for all the native
speakers whom I have consulted. (All the individuals in the list of
speakers in the footnote of acknowledgements were consulted about
these examples and similar ones, and they all found them to be
flawless.)
8.2.4.2. In the absence of Agr, only PRO is licensed as a subject; an
overt DP is not, irrespective of its Case
Turning to problematic examples not mentioned in Aygen (2002), we
saw earlier that irrealis relative clauses cannot have any overt
subject, Genitive or otherwise; the only possible subject is PRO. The
next two examples illustrate this point once again, for the readers’
convenience:
(67) a.[[PRO san -a
ver -ecek] bir vazo]
you -DAT give -FUTN a vase
bul -du
-m
find-PAST -1.SG
‘I found a vase to give you.’
b.*[[Ben
/Ben -im
san -a
ver -ecek]
I (NOM) / I -GEN you -DAT give -FUTN
bir vazo] bul -du
-m
a vase find -PAST -1.SG
Intended reading: ‘I found a vase for me to give you.’
In the presence of Agr, the same FUTN marker expresses Future/
Indicative; a Genitive subject is licensed—due to the presence of the
Agr element:
192
Jaklin Kornfilt
(68) [[Ben-im
san -a
ver -ece¤ -im] vazo] -yu
I -GEN you -DAT give -FUTN-1.SG vase -ACC
bul -du
-m
find-PAST -1.SG
‘I found the vase I am going to give you.’
Remember that Aygen claims that the nominal head of the relative
clause licenses Genitive subjects, and that the Agr element of a
clause is irrelevant for the subject being licensed via Case. She
would therefore predict that the version of (67)b. with a Genitive
subject should be grammatical.
Thus, both the fact that irrealis relative clauses cannot have overt
subjects (as shown by the examples in [67]) and the contrast with
future tense relative clauses that do have Genitive subjects (as shown
by [68]) are problematic for Aygen (2002) but just as expected under
the approach developed in the present study, as comparison of these
constructions shows the importance of Agr for subject Case licensing
as well as the irrelevance of an external nominal head.
8.2.4.3. Determining factor not Mood by itself (in general); e.g.
noun-complement clauses with the same Mood, but
different categorial features
Aygen (2002) mentions in passing that Mood plays a role in
determining the subject Case, too, but does not make explicit in what
way this would interact with the subject Case determination via the
external nominal head. But suppose that we do pursue this idea. We
would have to say that irrealis mood somehow blocks the Genitive
Case licensed by the external nominal head, while indicative mood
does not do so.
Vague and unlikely as this proposal is, it would draw the correct
distinction between indicative/future and irrealis relative clauses.
However, it is clear that Mood does not determine subject Case
marking in Turkish in general. This can be seen clearly by
contrasting (69) with (70):
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
193
(69) [Ben-im
aile -m
-i
terket -ti¤ -im ]
I -GEN family -1.SG -ACC abandon-FN-1.SG
söylenti -si
rumor -CMPM
‘the rumor that I abandoned my family’
(70) [Ben
aile -m
-i
terket -ti
-m ]
I (NOM) family -1.SG -ACC abandon-PAST-1.SG
söylenti -si
rumor -CMPM
‘the rumor that I abandoned my family’ (i.e. same as in the
previous example)
(69) illustrates a nominalized indicative noun-complement clause,
while (70) exemplifies a fully verbal, but also indicative noun-complement clause. Both have obviously an external nominal head. But
only (69) has a Genitive subject, while (70) has a Nominative subject. There is no difference in Mood. However, there is a difference
in the local marker for Agr: it is nominal in (69), thus licensing Genitive subject Case, and verbal in (70), thus licensing Nominative subject Case. Thus, these facts and their contrast are just what my approach predicts.
However, this contrast, and especially the Nominative (rather than
Genitive) subject in (70) are problematic for Aygen (2002). Her
analysis predicts Genitive subjects for both constructions, due to the
external nominal head in both. Since there is no Mood difference
between the two, her analysis cannot take recourse to a Mood-based
determination of subject Case, either.
We thus see that what matters for subject Case and its overt realization are the categorial features of Agr.25
8.2.4.4. Another relevant construction: The nominalized indicative
clause as a postpositional complement
Yet another type of construction that is discussed in Aygen (2002) in
the context of the supposed correlation Genitive subject—external
194
Jaklin Kornfilt
nominal head is the nominalized indicative clause as a postpositional
complement. We saw that such clauses have Nominative rather than
Genitive subjects (unless they are in a predicational relationship).
Aygen gives examples showing that no nominal head is possible
when the subject of such a clause is in the Nominative; to be wellformed, the subject of such a clause must be in the Genitive:
(71) *[[Hasan anla
-dı¤-› ] fley -e
göre
]
Hasan understand -FN-3.SG thing-DAT according to
herkes
anla
-yacak
everybody understand -FUT
Intended reading: ‘According to the thing that Hasan
understood, everybody will understand.’
(Aygen 2002: example [15 a.]; glosses and translation slightly
changed)
(72) [[Hasan-›n
anla
-dı¤ -› ] fley -e
Hasan-GEN understand -FN -3.SG thing -DAT
göre
] herkes
anla
-yacak
according to everybody understand -FUT
‘According to the thing that Hasan understood, everybody will
understand.’
(Aygen 2002: example [16]; glosses and translation slightly
changed)
(73) [[Hasan haber -i
anla
-dı¤-›n ] -a
Hasan news -ACC understand -FN-3.SG -DAT
göre
] herkes
anla
-yacak
according to everybody understand -FUT
‘Given that Hasan understood the news, everybody will.’
(Aygen 2002: example [17]; glosses and translation slightly
changed)
This triplet does not establish that the Genitive subject is due to
the external noun in (72). The account I have proposed in this study
explains these facts too, and without all the problems that go along
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
195
with Aygen’s analysis. In (71) and (72), we have a relative clause.
Predication between fley ‘thing’ and the modifier clause would
referentially index the clause and thus turn the nominal Agr into a
licenser of Genitive. This is why (72) is well-formed, but (71),
without the Genitive, is ill-formed. In (73), the clause does not
receive a referential index from anywhere. Since this is an indicative,
and thus categorially hybrid, clause, its nominal Agr is not licensed
to be a Genitive licenser clause-internally, either. Therefore, no
genuine subject Case is licensed, and default Nominative applies
instead.
A further problem with Aygen’s claim that her analysis explains
the existence of such triplets is the following: why should verbs
subcategorize for noun-complement constructions (whether overtly
or covertly headed by an external noun), while postpositions
subcategorize for nominalized clauses without external nominal
heads? Why should any kind of (factive) nominalized clause reject
an external nominal head when the clause is an adjunct—whether as
an adjunct itself, or as part of an adjunct, when it is subcategorized
by a postposition? Aygen (2002) does not attempt to explain or
motivate this difference, while basing her (as shown here,
problematic) analysis on the assumption of this difference.
8.2.5.
Problems with scope facts
If the Genitive subject in indicative nominalized clauses somehow
AGREEs with an external head noun, one would expect for suitable
subjects to be able to take scope over that head noun, at least optionally.
Miyagawa (1993) shows that in Japanese, this is indeed an option
for Genitive subjects, but not for Nominative subjects of nominal
complement clauses.
Turkish examples differ in this respect:
196
Jaklin Kornfilt
(74) Ali veya Veli -nin parti -ye
gel -ece¤
-i
Ali or
Veli -GEN party-DAT come -FUTFN -3.SG
ihtimal
-i
yüz
-de
elli -den yüksek.
probability -CMPM hundred-LOC fifty -ABL high
‘The probability that Ali or Veli will come to the party is
greater than fifty per cent.’
(75) Ali veya Veli -nin parti -ye
gel -di¤-i
Ali or
Veli -GEN party-DAT come -FN-3.SG
ihtimal
-i
yüz
-de
elli -den yüksek.
probability -CMPM hundred-LOC fifty -ABL high
‘The probability that Ali or Veli came to the party is greater
than fifty per cent.’
For those speakers who accept these constructions as well-formed,
the head noun has scope over the Genitive subject; the reverse scope
is not possible. In other words, for those speakers who accept them,
these examples can mean: ‘The probability that either Ali or Veli
came/will come to the party is greater than fifty per cent.’ However,
they cannot mean: ‘Either the probability that Ali came to the party is
greater than fifty per cent, or the probability that Veli came to the
party is greater than fifty per cent.’
This strongly suggests that the Genitive subject is not in a nonlocal (or indirect) AGREE relation with the external head ihtimal
‘probability’, nor has it risen to the specifier position of that external
head or of its associated D. In Japanese, such raising might be possible or necessary, as the complement clauses of nouns (or the modifier clauses of relative clauses) are not nominalized themselves. They
neither have a nominal Agr, nor do they have TAM morphology with
nominal features. Therefore, an analysis imputing Genitive licensing
capabilities to the external head is plausible for Japanese, with the
concomitant scope effects.
In Turkish, however, the clause has local morphology with nominal categorial features, and thus Genitive subject Case can be licensed by closer nominal elements than an external noun. As a consequence, attempts to impute Genitive licensing to such an external
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
197
nominal head fail when confronted with syntactic challenges, as we
have seen.
9.
Conclusions and some speculations
I have claimed in this paper that the subject-predicate agreement
morphology of subordinate clauses in Turkish may license overt
subjects in the following ways: 1. If the Agr element is itself licensed
categorially within its clause, it also licenses genuine subject Case
(and thus an overt subject). An Agr element is licensed if it occurs in
a morphological sequence with categorially fully specified TAM
markers and is of the same categorial type as those and as the higher
functional projections. 2. If the Agr is not licensed in this way (which
typically is the case when a nominal Agr shows up after a categorially underspecified TAM marker, i.e. the factive future or non-future
markers and under a CP=ForceP, i.e. a verbal functional projection),
an overt subject can be licensed in one of two ways: A. If the Agr
bears a referential index (in the sense of Rizzi 1994), it is licensed
itself and can license genuine subject Case. Such referential index
can be inherited by Agr in one of two ways: 1. Via a primary θ-role
that the clause, headed by Agr, receives; 2. Via predication between
such a clause and a co-indexed head. B. Where neither categorial
homogeneity nor indexation enables an Agr to assign subject Case
(and where there also is no negative Agr element that licenses null
Case), default Case is assigned instead. In Turkish, default Case is
Nominative.
In contrast to two studies on the same issue (but limited to factive
subordination only), one preceding the current study temporally and
the other following its earlier incarnations, this larger perspective on
subordination and subjects in subordinate domains shows that it is
unnecessary to make otherwise unmotivated assumptions, e.g. the
assumption that subject Case is blocked under θ-marking, or that
nominalized argument clauses have all an abstract nominal head and
are noun-complement clauses. Furthermore, subject Case is not
198
Jaklin Kornfilt
licensed by Tense/Aspect or Mood per se—the latter only together
with Agr, which itself determines, in Turkish, finiteness.
This study, then, shows us that in a morphologically rich language
like Turkish, not only does Agr express ϕ-features, but also categorial distinctions which are reflected in the subject Case it licenses.
Another result is that θ-marking, whose importance for extraction
has long been established theoretically and cross-linguistically, has
been claimed here to also play a central role in determining subject
Case. It would be interesting to find additional cross-linguistic
evidence; the facts of European Portuguese are very suggestive in
this regard.
It was important, when referring to the Case of subjects, to distinguish between genuine and default subject Case. Genuine subject
Case (whether Nominative or Genitive) depends on the category of
the Agr that licenses it. Subjects with genuine subject Case are in
complementary distribution with PRO or Accusative subjects (depending on the presence versus absence of Agr), while subjects with
default Case are in free variation with PRO in the absence of Agr
(other than in infinitives and irrealis relative clauses, where there is
negative Agr), and such subjects are independent from the presence
of Agr with respect to Case. It is important, when categorizing Case,
not to draw the lines simply according to the overt appearance of
Case (i.e. Nominative versus Genitive), but according to the way in
which Case is licensed—something which may, but not always does,
coincide with the overt realization of Case.
There is one potential problem with the account I proposed:
For the factive nominalized, categorially hybrid clauses, I
proposed an analysis based on the claim that they are CPs—in
contrast with the fully nominal, non-hybrid, non-factive clauses
which I claimed lack a CP-level.
I further claimed that in factive nominalized clauses, the nominal
Agr raises to the C-head of the clause and thus inherits the index that
the entire CP receives; it is this index that enables Agr to license
genuine subject Case.
The potential problem mentioned is typological: Sabel (1996)
points out that in languages with raising of a verb or of a verbal
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
199
element to C in non-finite clauses, no WH-movement is possible, as
the raised element obliterates the [+WH] features in C, making it
impossible for the Spec, CP to host WH-elements (cf. Sabel 1996:
297). Yet, I showed that in Turkish, it is the factive nominalized
clause where raising Agr takes place and where RCs and embedded
WH-questions are possible, i.e. in whose Spec,CP the WH-operator
would be hosted.
I suggest that the problem is only apparent. In all of the languages
listed by Sabel in this context—all of them Indo-European
languages—there is obviously complementary distribution between a
C-position occupied by a complementizer and one into which a verb
or other predicational morphology has been raised; thus, it is
plausible to suggest, as Sabel does, that raising erases [+WH] features otherwise expressed by a complementizer.
However, in a language like Turkish, there is never an overt
complementizer introducing nominalized clauses. The nominalized
predicate, raised into C with the Agr, includes the Mood marker—i.e.
the factive marker, and it is this marker that encodes the hybrid
category and the associated CP-status of the clause, thus acting as a
clause-typing marker of the sort exhibited by Indo-European
languages in the shape of a complementizer. Therefore, Agr (+Mood)
raising to C in Turkish does not obliterate [+WH] features in C; such
raising might in fact be motivated by the need to actually activate
those features.26
In the body of the paper, I have suggested that the approach to
licensed subject Case, based on referential (in the sense of Rizzi
1994) indexing (or lack thereof) on a categorially hybrid clause may
be extended to other languages, under appropriate parametrization.
For example, while in Turkish, the indexing must indeed be
referential in the appropriate sense, i.e. must express a primary θ-role
or predication (following Williams 1994, for whom predication is
linked to θ-marking), in European Portuguese, the indexing can
express a secondary θ-role, as well, but (probably) cannot express
predication. In both languages, the subject Case licenser is Agr,
appropriately indexed, and raised to C. In other languages, too, it has
been proposed that an inflectional element like Agr (or, depending on
200
Jaklin Kornfilt
the language, Tense) may license subject Case if it is raised to C.
This was mentioned, in passing, for Modern Greek. Bayer (1983–84)
has proposed such an account for Bavarian; similar proposals exist
for other languages, too.
This means that the raised Agr can reach into the lower functional
projection, i.e. into the AgrP (or TenseP, depending on the
language). Thus, we have a configuration and mechanism somewhat
similar to ECM-constructions, where it is a designated verb that
reaches into a “deficient” clause—in Turkish, the deficiency being
expressed by the lacking Agr. Here, in the indexed clauses with their
Agr (or Tense) raised to C, the clause is similarly deficient, due to
the raising of its head to C.27
In Japanese, there is no inflectional element such as Agr or Tense.
I won’t speculate here on the nature of the regular subject Case, i.e.
the Nominative, in Japanese. However, perhaps due to the lack of an
appropriate inflectional subject Case licenser, Japanese has the
possibility of an external nominal head of clauses licensing a nominal subject Case, i.e. the Genitive.
Turkish, on the other hand, by virtue of having nominal as well as
verbal inflectional heads, can have subject Case licensed locally, i.e.
within the clause. This is particularly instructive when the Agr is
nominal, as (under appropriate indexation) a nominal subject Case
can be licensed locally, without needing recourse to an external
nominal head, in contrast with Japanese, where such an external head
is needed for Genitive licensing.
We may say, then, that the nominal Agr in Turkish acts, in a
sense, as the Japanese external nominal head. Thus, in turn, we may
reach a new understanding of why Agr must, or even is able to, bear
referential indexing in Turkish: it is a (small) noun.28
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
201
Notes
*
This paper corresponds to the presentation at the Workshop on
morphologically rich languages, held within the DGfS conference that took
place in Leipzig, in February/March 2001. It is also related to Kornfilt
(2002), but is very different from that paper: the coverage of the present
paper is larger, as it looks at non-factive as well as factive nominalizations.
Also, the approach taken here is different: while here, indexation of Agr is
limited to referential indexation, the just mentioned work does not do so
and thus runs into problems. Furthermore, (referential) indexation of Agr in
operator-variable constructions is performed here via predication between
the clause and a nominal (phrasal) head, while indexation of Agr was done
via Spec-Head agreement within CP in the aforementioned work. The
approach based on categorial features is new here, as is discussion and
criticism of some other work that addresses one of the asymmetries studied
here. I would like to thank the workshop organizers, Uwe Junghanns and
Luka Szucsich, for inviting me to the workshop and for their patience with
the drawn-out progress of this paper. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to
both organizers (and editors of this volume) for their close reading of a
preliminary draft of this paper, and for their comments; two anonymous
referees also provided insightful and useful comments, and I thank them. I
also wish to thank Noam Chomsky for discussion of this material, and
especially of the issue of default Case in adjunct domains. I am grateful to
the DGfS for providing travel funds that made my participation at the
workshop possible. I owe a special debt of gratitude to a number of Turkish
native speakers for adding to the pool of native speakers’ judgements:
Çi¤dem Bal›m, Akgül Baylav, Cemal Beflkardefl, Demir Dinç, Cem
Mansur, Alp Otman, Bengisu Rona, Mehmet Yan›lmaz, Ayfle Yazgan. I
further thank Mark Brown for his help with the formatting of this paper. In
addition, I would like to thank the audiences of a number of related
presentations: in 1999 at the MPI EVA, at the University of Jena, the
University of Venice, the University of Paris at Jussieu, and at Bo¤aziçi
University; in 2001, in addition to the DGfS workshop in Leipzig, at the
Altaic workshop at MIT, and at the CUNY Graduate Center; in 2002, at the
In the Mood conference at Frankfurt University, at ZAS Berlin, at Cornell
University, and at the MPI EVA in Leipzig. Among those audiences, I
would like to thank, in particular, the following individuals: Artemis
Alexiadou, Josef Bayer, John Bowers, Guglielmo Cinque, Peter Cole, Chris
Collins, Marcel den Dikken, Günther Grewendorf, Jacqueline Guéron,
Gabriella Hermon, Sumru Özsoy, Shigeru Miyagawa, Jean-Yves Pollock,
Luigi Rizzi, Joachim Sabel, Eser Erguvanlı Taylan, and John Whitman. All
shortcomings of the resulting study are to be blamed on the author.
202
Jaklin Kornfilt
1.
In this paper, I shall use Agr for the overt morphological agreement marker,
and AGR for the related syntactic position.
I am using the term "extended projection" in the sense of Grimshaw (1991).
However, contrary to that work, I do allow categorially mixed extended
projections, especially for nominal predicates; for a discussion, see Borsley
and Kornfilt (2000).
See also Stowell (1981), Sabel (2002) for indexation of arguments via θmarking. In the concluding section, I speculate that in Turkish, the Agr element is a true nominal, similar to an external noun, and as such it is expected that it can and will inherit the θ-index of the domain that it heads.
“Verbal predicate” refers to predicates whose functional projections are
fully verbal (rather than mixed, i.e. including nominal layers, as is the case
in the nominalized subordinate clauses which we will be discussing
shortly). Thus, predicate adjectives and predicate nouns fall under the term
“verbal predicate”, as they include either a copula, or else some sort of
auxiliary, e.g. ol ‘be, become’, et ‘make”, etc., whereby these “light” verbs
have their own verbal functional projections—unless they are nominalized,
in which case such adjectival or nominal predicates would, of course, fall
under the term “nominal predicate”.
For agreement paradigms in Turkish, the reader is referred to reference
grammars of Turkish, e.g. Lewis (1967), Kornfilt (1997).
For discussion, see Kornfilt (1977) and Kornfilt (1996a). For an account of
Turkish ECM, proposing distinct derivations for clauses with versus
without overt Agr, see Moore (1998).
“Genuine” tense does seem to be the Nominative Case licenser in Modern
Greek. In ECM-constructions, only the present tense, i.e. the citation form,
can show up; alternation with other tenses is not possible, and neither is a
Nominative subject. Thus, non-alternating present tense is “fake”—and so
is Agr in these forms that mimic the infinitive. Iatridou (1993) suggests that
in Classical Greek, which did have an infinitive form, Agr was the subject
Case assigner, while Tense is the subject Case assigner in Modern Greek.
The correlation is suggestive for a possible parametrization, as Greek seems
to have undergone a change from a Turkish-type language (i.e. with an Agrless, special infinitive form, and with Agr as the subject Case licenser) to a
language without a dedicated infinitive form, where Agr, in those
constructions where it does show up, is “fake” for purposes of subject Case
licensing.
One of the anonymous reviewers raises the objection that if this analysis of
ECM constructions is correct for Turkish, it would incorrectly predict
corresponding sentences to be ungrammatical in English. But, as a matter of
fact, most native speakers I have consulted indeed judged examples like the
translation of (4)a. to be ill-formed. Also, crucially, those speakers, while
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
9.
10.
11.
12.
203
not allowing for WH-movement out of ECM-infinitivals, do allow for WHextraction out of Control infinitivals, i.e. from infinitivals that do have CPstatus. For such speakers, then, the analysis carries over to English straightforwardly. There were, to be sure, also some speakers who accepted such
examples in English. I shall not attempt offering an account of the idiolects
of those latter speakers. Note also that Iatridou (1993) suggests that Tense,
the subject Case licenser in Modern Greek, must be in C so as to fulfill its
Case-licensing function.
Kornfilt and Greenberg (2000) give examples for both lexically and
syntactically derived nominalizations as well as criteria to distinguish these
two types. One criterion is argument structure. I assume that lexical
nominalization can change the argument structure of a predicate, while
syntactic nominalization cannot. Consequently, externalizing an internal
argument can happen only via passive morphology in syntactic
nominalizations, while lexical nominalization can effect such
externalization directly, i.e. without passive morphology. Furthermore,
sentence-level adverbs are possible with such predicates, in contrast with
lexical nominalizations. Further discussion and examples can be found in
Kornfilt (2000a) and in Borsley and Kornfilt (2000). An early work where
criteria distinguishing lexical and syntactic nominalization for English is
Chomsky (1970). For a concise, but very insightful and influential early
generative treatment of nominalizations in Turkish, see Appendix C of Lees
(1968).
The gloss NFN (nominal non-factive) here refers not to the semantics, but to
the morphology of this marker. For example, as will be shown later (in
section 8), psychological predicates can take both “factive” and “nonfactive” nominalized forms with factive/indicative semantics.
Following general Turkological practice, I use capital letters to represent
phonologically determined alternations. Vowel alternations are determined
by Vowel Harmony, and consonant alternations by a number of phenomena,
e.g. devoicing of obstruents, and conversion of /K/ into /¤/.
There is another way to accommodate the extraction-based contrasts
sketched here: both types of nominal embedded clauses would be analyzed
as CPs (embedded within DPs), but only the indicatives would have a
[+WH] or, more generally, [+Operator] feature, while the nominal subjunctives would be [-Operator]. I have proposed such analyses in the past; see,
e.g., Kornfilt (1993) and (1995b). Sabel (1996) makes a similar proposal for
a number of other languages. While this analysis covers the data, I think
that the proposal made in the present paper is less ad-hoc and more convincing, as it is in line with a number of other facts, i.e. those presented earlier in this section, showing categorial differences between the two nominal
clause types. However, the question arises as to how an operator can be
204
13.
14.
15.
16.
Jaklin Kornfilt
extracted out of a non-factive nominal clause, given lack of a CP-layer. Examples like (10) and (13) illustrate the possibility of such extraction out of
NFN-clauses when embedded under FN-clauses (which do have a CPlayer). I suggest that the AgrP-layer (i.e. the Finite ness layer) provides an
escape hatch for the extracted operator; however, it is only the CP-layer
(i.e. the Force layer) that provides the target position, i.e. the “resting
place”, for such an operator (as opposed to a mere escape hatch position).
Another apparent problem concerning adjunct clauses are posed by
examples like the two last ones, where the adjunct clause is marked with a
Case whose provenance is not immediately clear: if the superordinate
predicate does not assign a θ-role to the clause, it also does not check for its
Case. I propose that the Locative and Ablative here are licensed not via the
regular mechanisms, but semantically. Following Larson (1985), I have
claimed in Kornfilt (2000b) that not all Case is assigned by a θ-role assigner
or via specifier–head agreement, but rather that some configurations require, for semantic reasons, certain Cases. The Locative and Ablative are
required here to convey the semantics of something like "at a specific point
in time", "for a particular reason". These Cases have to be overt, because
otherwise the appropriate semantic interpretation could not be assigned to
the respective clauses.
For detailed discussion of the properties of PRO as contrasted with other
empty categories in Turkish, see Kornfilt (1996b). For present purposes, the
most important property of PRO is that of Control; pro, in contrast, is not
controlled.
European Portuguese evidently doesn’t make an overt, morphological
distinction between nominal versus verbal Agr. Consequently, the subject
Case licensed by Agr is of only one single shape, i.e. that of Nominative.
The question arises here whether European Portuguese might also benefit
from the index-based approach proposed here, thus enabling us to abandon
the Case-based approach proposed by Raposo, and bringing it closer to the
approach being adopted here for Turkish.
One anonymous reviewer discusses a paradigm in European Portuguese
which suggests that for this language, at least, it is Case rather than
indexing due to θ−marking which licenses nominal Agr as a subject Case
licenser. S/he shows that the preposition antes ‘before’ cannot assign Case
and therefore needs the presence of de ‘of’, as a Case assigner for nominal
prepositional complements. S/he further shows that antes may take fully
tensed clausal complements, introduced by the complementizer que,
without de. In contrast, when antes takes inflected infinitival clauses as its
complement, then de becomes obligatory. The reviewer interprets these
facts as meaning that in the latter instance, de is needed to license the
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
17.
18.
19.
205
nominal Agr of the inflected infinitive as a subject Case licenser via Case,
because indexation of Agr via θ−marking is ensured even without de.
Without knowing how uninflected infinitival clauses without overt subjects
behave in such contexts, I am not sure how to evaluate such facts. It is clear
that EP differs from Turkish in—among other properties—allowing nonprimary θ−roles (like those assigned by prepositions) to activate Agr in
general, in contrast to Turkish, where such activation by non-primary
θ−roles is not possible. Such a non-primary θ−role would be assigned to the
inflected infinitive that is the complement of antes. It is possible that de is
needed here not for the activation of Agr, but as a Case licenser for the
entire infinitival clause, made nominal by its nominal Agr-head, and that
activation of Agr is achieved by indexation as I have proposed—with the
parametric difference to Turkish that a non-primary θ−role can achieve this
indexation in EP. Further investigations along this line of inquiry must be
left to future research.
Relative clauses with non-subject targets bear the regular factive nominalization morphology, as expected (cf. Kornfilt 1984, among others, versus
the established usage of terming this morphology object relativization). RCs
whose targets are subjects have a special nominalization marker, as have
RCs whose targets are contained within larger subjects, and RCs with
targets in impersonal constructions. These facts have been discussed, with
different proposals, by Underhill (1972), Hankamer and Knecht (1976), and
Kornfilt (2000a), among others. Coindexation between the moved operator
and the associated C is exploited in Kornfilt (2000a) to explain the
occurrence of this special nominalization marker in these particular
configurations.
Kornfilt (1995b) proposes an analysis of Free Relative Clauses in Turkish
such that there is a nominal head position in these constructions to which
the relativization operator moves and to which, if the construction does
have an Agr element, this element adjoins. Thus, Free RCs in Turkish are
actually not headless. To be more exact than the formulation in the text, the
head isn’t phonologically empty, either, when there is overt Agr, as the head
is occupied with some phonological material (i.e. that of the Agr element),
if the analysis in this older work is on the right track.
Aygen (2002) analyzes examples like (44) and (45) as Free Relatives, as
well. (She does not discuss comparatives.) She refers to Kornfilt (2001) as
having made such a proposal, but also refers to additional sources as having
offered the same analysis. Those references among her list which I could
locate (leaving out an MA-thesis by B. Öztürk, which I have been unable to
locate so far) do not offer such an analysis. The items in question are:
Hankamer (1972), Sezer (1991) and an earlier version of Sezer (2002), and
Kennelly (1996). Öztürk (2002), which appears to include relevant parts of
206
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
Jaklin Kornfilt
her thesis, does mention the relevant Genitive/Nominative contrasts in
nominalized indicative clauses as postpositional complements, but does not
offer any account of that contrast, other than claiming that it shows the
irrelevance of nominal Agr in determining subject Case—a claim which my
current study argues against.
It should be mentioned that Kornfilt (2001) was a presentation similar to the
one at the earlier Leipzig workshop which forms the basis of the current
study.
This example is ill-formed in most stylistic registers but very formal ones.
For a detailed study of default Case (under a similar, but not identical, view
of this notion), see Schütze (2001). He offers a characterization which is
similar to the one I have proposed in the text: “The default case forms of a
language are those that are used to spell out nominal expressions (e.g., DP)
that are not associated with any case feature assigned or otherwise
determined by syntactic mech anisms.” (Schütze 2001: 206.) Another recent
application of this notion is to be found in Szucsich (2002), who proposes
the Instrumental as a default Case for adjuncts in certain constructions in
Russian and other Slavic languages.
This analysis of the infinitival morphology predicts that not only argument
clauses, but also adjunct clauses that are headed by infinitival morphology
and lack relevant indexation should display only PRO subjects and never
overt subjects. This prediction is correct.
This analysis also extends to irrealis relative clauses, illustrated in (42). The
marker -(y)AcAK, glossed as FUTN, would now be analyzed as two morphemes: -(y)AcA under Mood, and -K under Agr, with the latter bearing
negative value for agreement, just as with infinitives. This analysis would
also draw a distinction between -(y)AcAK as the genuine Future Tense
Nominal with indicative mood, and -(y)AcA(-K) as a (nominal) irrealis
mood.
In addition to more recent sources like Chomsky (2001), early sources of
this assumption are Chomsky (1986) and Pesetsky (1982).
The fact that nominal possessive phrases (which clearly lack any kind of
Mood) are not sensitive to the argument-adjunct distinction and always
exhibit Genitive specifiers, as we saw earlier, further shows that it is
categorial features and not Mood features that determine the choice of
licensed subject Case.
Hiraiwa (2001) assumes raising of a verbal complex to C, as well. He does
so for Japanese, in so called 'Ga-No conversion' instances, i.e. for instances
where a Nominative subject can optionally show up in the Genitive. He also
briefly discusses Genitive subjects in Turkish, for which he proposes
similar raising. Our proposals were obviously made independently of each
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
27.
28.
207
other, as I have been made aware of that study only recently. I would like to
thank John Whitman for having drawn my attention to it.
Note, however, that our proposals, similar as they are, do differ from each
other. I am assuming the raising of a verbal complex to C/D, but not only in
those instances where Genitive is licensed (as Hiraiwa does), but
everywhere. Thus, Nominative as a genuine subject Case is licensed by a
raised verb, too. It is referential indexation on the raised verbal complex
that includes an overt Agr element which licenses the appropriate subject
Case, not raising per se.
Furthermore, Hiraiwa is wrong in claiming that in Turkish, an overt complementizer blocks verb raising and thus Genitive subject Case. While Turkish
does have (right-branching) subordination introduced by complementizers
and with Nominative subjects, we have seen in this paper that leftbranching subordination without complementizers and with fully verbal
predicates is possible, too. Lack of complementizer should make raising
possible, according to Hiraiwa, and thus license Genitive subjects. Instead,
the subject is Nominative. This shows that it is not raising of the verb to C
per se that licenses a particular subject Case, but rather the category of the
inflected verb complex, and, in particular, the category of the Agr.
I would also like to point out that raising of a predicate to C in Turkish was
proposed , as far as I know, for the first time in Kural (1993), with different
motivation than my proposal in this paper.
I am grateful to Marcel den Dikken for pointing out the similarity between
the subject Case licensing mechanism proposed here and that found in ECM
constructions. den Dikken raised this similarity as a problem. However,
given the widely assumed nature of a Case-licensing predicate as having
raised to C (and thus licensing subject Case in ECM-like configurations) in
widely differing languages such as in Bavarian, European Portuguese, and
Modern Greek, I view this aspect of my approach as unproblematic.
I am grateful to Chris Collins for a suggestion along similar lines, after a
presentation of this material at Cornell University. If Agr is a nominal head,
what does it mean to say that Agr can be verbal, in those instances where I
posited a verbal Agr? "Verbal" Agr would then simply mean a nominal
agreement element which AGREEs with the verbal predicate in category
features. Likewise, what I have called a "nominal" Agr is a nominal head
which AGREEs with the categorial features of its phonological host, i.e. a
nominal predicate or a nominal head of a domain. In categorially hybrid
clauses, the Agr bears [+N] categorial agreement features which are in congruence with the higher K, but these features conflict with the verbal
features of the Tense and C-layers of the clausal architecture.
208
Jaklin Kornfilt
Abbreviations
1.
2.
3.
ABIL
ABL
ACC
ADV
AGR
Agr
AgrP
AOR
CAUS
CMPM
DAT
DP
DVN
FN
FUT
FUTN
GEN
K
KP
LOC
M
MP
MST
N
NP
NegABIL
NEGN
NF
NFN
NP
Op
PASS
PL
PRES.PART
PROF
First person
Second person
Third person
Abilitative
Ablative
Accusative
Adverbial
Agreement as a syntactic node
Agreement (as a morpheme);
agreement in general
Agreement Phrase
Aorist
Causative
Compound marker
Dative
Determiner phrase
Deverbal noun
Factive nominalization
Future
Future nominalization
Genitive
Case as a syntactic node
Case Phrase
(as a functional syntactic projection)
Locative
Mood
Mood Phrase
Modern Standard Turkish
Noun; nominal as a distinctive feature
Noun Phrase
Negative abilitative
Negative nominalizer
Nominal functional category
Non-factive nominalization
Noun phrase
Operator
Passive
Plural
Present participle
Professional suffix
Subject case in Turkish nominalized clauses
PROG
PRSPROG
REL.PART
REP.PAST
RES
SUBJNCT
SG
TAM
V
VBL.CONJ
VF
VP
Progressive
Present progressive
Relativization participle
Reported past
Resultative
Subjunctive
Singular
Tense/Aspect/Mood
Verb; verbal as a distinctive feature
Verbal conjunction
Verbal functional category
Verb phrase
209
210
Jaklin Kornfilt
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