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Quantifiers in Turkish

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Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 97))

Abstract

This section contains facts about Turkish syntax, morphology and phonology that are relevant to understanding the examples given throughout this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These exceptions arguably include ki, that introduces speech and attitude complements, çünkü, ‘because,’ and the indefinite article bir, under the analysis that it is an overt determiner.

  2. 2.

    See Erguvanlı Taylan (1984) and Kural (1992) for properties of scrambling in Turkish. See also Kural (1997a) for arguments against an antisymmetric (Kayne 1994) analysis of Turkish phrase structure.

  3. 3.

    The comitative is a seventh candidate and Kelepir (2001, p. 12) does list it as a case marker. However, its status is a matter of discussion, as it shares some syntactic and morpho-phonological properties with postpositions (Jaklin Kornfilt, personal communication, July 22, 2014.).

  4. 4.

    By using the expression ‘noun phrase,’ I do not intend to make any claims about whether Turkish has a DP layer or not. For proposals against the presence of a DP layer in Turkish see Öztürk (2005) and Bošković and Şener (2014) for proposals in favor of it, as well as arguments against Öztürk’s proposal, see Arslan-Kechriotis (2006) and Kornfilt (2007).

  5. 5.

    For an in-depth presentation of these and other morpho-phonological processes see Göksel and Kerslake (2004, pp. 14–25) and Kornfilt (1997, pp. 498–500, 512–513).

  6. 6.

    About the copula in Turkish, see Kornfilt (1996a), Kelepir (2001), Enç (2004), Aygen (2009) and Saǧ (2013).

  7. 7.

    For a recent analysis of deǧil see Yakut Kubaş (2015).

  8. 8.

    The exact characterization of this morpheme is under debate. A desideratum for any attempt is to reconcile the observation that it resembles a third person agreement marker, as in (9), with the fact that it appears in noun-noun compounds, not shown here. For recent analyses, see Kharytonava (2011), Kunduracı (2013), and Erguvanlı Taylan and Öztürk Başaran (2014), as well as references therein.

  9. 9.

    Subjects and objects can also be dropped, but they will not be of concern here. For a general discussion of dropped arguments and their licensing conditions, see Kornfilt (1984), Enç (1986) and Erguvanlı Taylan (1986). Additionally, see Öztürk (2002) for a claim about a possible reconsideration of Turkish as a non-pro-drop language, and Kornfilt (2007) and Şener and Takahashi (2010) for claims about asymmetries between silent subjects and objects.

  10. 10.

    See Görgülü (2006), İşsever (2009) and Özsoy (2009) for properties of Turkish wh- words. For those of polar questions, see Zimmer (1998), Besler (1999), Aygen (2007), Kamali (2011), Yücel (2012), Gračanin-Yuksek (2014) and Özyıldız (2015).

  11. 11.

    Differences exist, in terms of optionality and ordering with respect to tense aspect markers, between first and second person, both singular and plural ‘agreement’ on the one hand, and third person plural ‘agreement’ on the other. A study targeting agreement in Turkish might find this inaccurate, but I must opt for ease of exposition here.

  12. 12.

    Recovered online on June 30, 2015. Accessible at:

    http://deniz.fr/saved_pages_for_data/yedi_cuceler.html

  13. 13.

    In asla, the suffix -an, borrowed from Arabic, is detectable but not transparent.

  14. 14.

    For recent work on the syntax and the semantics of -sA, see Iatridou (2013, 2015).

  15. 15.

    Hepsi derives from the universal A-Quantifier hep and the ‘possessive’ morpheme -(s)I. But this morpheme surfaces as consonant initial instead of being vowel initial as is expected after a consonant final stem:

    1. (i)

      exno=iAlternating surface forms of the possessive morpheme

      içki-si, ip-i

      drink-POSS string-POSS

      his drink, his string

    This suggests that hepsi derives from an intermediate form *hep-i-si where the possessive morpheme has doubled. This intermediate form is unacceptable in the variety of Turkish described here, but an informal online search reveals that both hep-i and hep-i-si are attested in other dialects (I am grateful to my reviewer for pointing out this possibility as support for my claim). An example can be found in İbrahim Tatlıses’s song ‘Tek tek.’ Nevertheless, in the variety of Turkish described here, the intermediate form is detectable in the colloquial diminutive form hep-i-cik – compare cep-cik, ‘(cute) pocket,’ to see that the stem final i is not a phonological insertion. Instances of such doubling do exist elsewhere in Turkish:

    1. (ii)

      exno=iikim, kim-i, kim-i-si, *kim-si

      who who-POSS who-POSS-POSS who-POSS

      who, some (people)

  16. 16.

    Recall that defa has two synonyms, kere and kez. Only defa is well formed with her.

  17. 17.

    As my reviewer notes, one should be careful and not read (63) ironically.

  18. 18.

    Thanks to my reviewer for suggesting this, as well as example (66b).

  19. 19.

    My reviewer notes that, in some dialects, çok çok, the gap in (71a), has the meaning of ‘at worst,’ instead of the intended ‘very many.’

    1. (iii)

      exno=iiiKonsere gidelim, çok çok bilet bulamadan döneriz.

      to.the.concert let’s.go many many ticket without.finding we’ll.go.back

      Let’s go to the concert, at worst we’ll come back without finding tickets.

    The same reviewer notes that, in their dialect, the sequences biraz az and az biraz are unacceptable. I have indicated this in the examples with the sign ‘%’. It is possible that in such sequences, one of the quantifiers is being used as an A-Quantifier.

  20. 20.

    Thanks to my reviewer for correcting the second generalization.

  21. 21.

    Note that veya is a compound of ve, ‘and,’ and ya, a disjunctive morpheme, see (81b).

  22. 22.

    My reviewer notes, at various points throughout this paper, that I mistakenly assume possessive suffix doubling where there is none. This is an accurate observation, at places, but examples like (101) show that the phenomenon is real, unless one can find a way of analyzing the intermediate ‘i’ as a phonological insertion in birisi. See Footnote 15.

  23. 23.

    Elided bir, sometimes spelled as bi’, with an apostrophe, has recently started appearing in written form in advertisements in Turkey.

  24. 24.

    Arslan Kechriotis lists the quantifier bazı as being compatible with both mass and count nouns. I do not disagree with this judgment. For present purposes, it suffices to note that bazı, like other quantifiers listed in (122a), carry count meanings when they combine with mass nouns.

  25. 25.

    Count nouns can also be constrained into mass readings, to some extent.

    1. (iv)

      exno=ivCesed-in hep-si var-dı mı?

      corpse-GEN all-POSS arrive-PST.3S PQ

      Did all of the corpse arrive? (For instance, at the morgue.)

  26. 26.

    The phenomenon exists in French and in English. Moreover, Vincent Homer, p.c., points out that the plural does not affect the availability of the quantificational meaning. Compare also ‘a load, loads, two loads of books.’ The last one only receives a literal reading.

    1. (v)

      exno=v

      1. a.

        Yıǧın-lar-ca kitap

        heap-P -cA book

        Heaps of books

      2. b.

        Un / des / #deux tas de livre-s

        one / DET.P / two heap of book-P

        A heap / heaps / #two heaps of books

  27. 27.

    Orthographic conventions require that birtakım be spelled together when intended as an existential quantifier and separately, as bir takım, when intended as a group denoting classifier phrase.

  28. 28.

    They do form nouns: yokluk, ‘poverty, nothingness,’ and verbs: yok ol-, ‘to disappear,’ yok et-, ‘to destroy.’ Compare varlık, ‘creature’ or ‘abundance,’ var ol-, ‘to come into existence.’

  29. 29.

    In discussing existentials like ‘There is a dog in the garden’ the ‘pivot’ refers to the DP ‘a dog,’ and the ‘coda’ to the PP ‘in the garden.’ In Turkish, codas will be locatives or genitives.

  30. 30.

    The relevant notion for Enç is ‘specificity’ rather than ‘definiteness.’ For the details of the discussion, I refer the reader to the article.

  31. 31.

    See Kelepir (2001) and Kural (1992) for further examples.

  32. 32.

    Pair-list readings are otherwise available in Turkish multiple wh- questions:

    1. (vi)

      exno=viHangi öǧrenci hangi soru-ya cevap ver-di?

      which student which question-DAT answer give-PST.3S

      Which student answered which question?

      Infelicitous answer: Bill.

      Felicitous answer: Can answered Question 1, Bill, Question 14, etc.

  33. 33.

    Sentences with her, the distributive universal quantifier, with a positive existential predicate are subject to the definiteness effect and ungrammatical. White et al. (2011), however, observe that negative predicates obviate the effect.

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Acknowledgements

Different people helped me out with this paper, in many different ways. Thanks to: Denis Paperno and Ed Keenan for their trust; Dominique Sportiche for making my visit to UCLA possible; Vincent Homer and Jaklin Kornfilt for their time and plenty of feedback; Seth Cable and Barbara Partee for agreeing to discuss numerals; Dilara Erişen, Tunç Kalaycıoǧlu and Melisa Önder for their patience with some of the data; Brianna Kaufman for discussing the meanings of çok and az; Paloma Jeretič for patience; my reviewer for sharing and contradicting judgments, patiently pointing out obvious mistakes, and suggesting many lines of analyses and two other linguists, I must also leave unnamed. All errors are mine.

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  1. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

    Deniz Özyıldız

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  1. LORIA (UMR 7503), CNRS, Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France

    Denis Paperno

  2. Dept. of Linguistics 3125 Campbell Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Edward L. Keenan

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Özyıldız, D. (2017). Quantifiers in Turkish. In: Paperno, D., Keenan, E. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 97. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44330-0_17

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