Determiners in the Turkish Attributive Syntagm Structure

Kontrastivni osvrt

Abstract

This paper deals with the syntactic structure of the Turkish syntagm and the linear position of determiners in relation to its governing element. In a syntagm with neutral (syntactically unmarked) word order, the determiners are sequenced according to the semic scope: the first position is taken by a determiner with the highest level of semantic predication, while the last position is taken by a determiner with the one of lowest – e.g. bu büyük, çirkin, beton apartmanlar = those large, ugly, concrete buildings]. The last determiner (beton) is positioned immediately in front of the governing element of the syntagm (apartmanlar) and it is semantically emphasized, because it is in the position of the informative predicate or rheme. The second most focused element is the first in the line of several determiners (bu), because it is in the position of the informative subject or topic. In a syntagm with syntactically marked word order, the semic scope does not influence the linear order of the determiners because, through the choice of the position (first, second, third, etc.), the desired meaning is achieved. The Turkish sentence has the same informative structure, where the topic is always in the foreground, while the rheme is in the background of the sentence (the position before the predicate). The paper also addresses the possibilities and limitations of the current functional sentence perspective.