Derin Dinçer, Independence of Case and Inner Aspect in Turkish

M.S. Candidate: Derin Dinçer
Program: Cognitive Science
Date: 06.09.2024 / 12:00
Place: 
A-212

Abstract: Inner aspect refers to how a predicate describes the temporal structure of an event. Traditionally, an event with an endpoint is defined as delimited (i.e. telic), and an event without an endpoint is defined as nondelimited (i.e. atelic). In the literature, it is widely accepted that there is a direct relationship between the accusative marked internal argument and a delimited event interpretation. Some languages such as Finnish mark delimitedness with overt morphological markers where the accusative marks delimited events and the partitive marks nondelimited events (Kiparsky, 1998). Nakipoğlu (2009) claims that Turkish is such a language and the accusative case on direct objects functions as delimiter in the language. Although there is a significant correlation between delimitedness interpretations of predicates and overt accusative marking of objects in Turkish, we will argue in this thesis that the relation between the accusative case and delimitedness in Turkish is indirect. We argue that the said relation is only indirect in Turkish on accounts of the following: (i) predicates with accusative marked objects can also denote nondelimited events and (ii) sentences without an accusative marked object can trigger delimited event interpretations. We argue in this thesis that the independent relationship between case and inner aspect follows from the autonomous structure of inner aspect following MacDonald (2006) and show that Turkish data supports this phenomenon.