Turkish Pluperfect as a Translational Equivalent for Some Serbo-Croatian Past Tenses

Abstract

The task of this paper is to establish which verb forms in Serbo-Croatian language are translated to Turkish as pluperfect, by comparing Ivo Andrić's novel A Bridge over river Drina (Na Drini ćuprija) with its translation to Turkish (Drina Köprüsü), for the pluperfect tense is very frequent in Turkish, whereas it is pushed out of use in Serbo-Croatian.

Our research shows that each Serbo-Croatian pluperfect is translated to Turkish as a pluperfect. But, these examples are relatively rare in our corpus. The most numerous examples are those in which Serbo-Croatian perfect is translated by turkish pluperfect. These examples we have when perfect in Serbo-Croatian expresses the earlier one between two past actions, which means when it is used relatively.

All the other examples of pluperfect in translation of the novel A bridge over river Drina are resulted from its preterital function, which means that several forms of pluperfect give additional narration. This use of turkish pluperfect may be recognized in long descriptions, but also in short parts of the text, when the phrase with a predicate in pluperfect tense has the function of giving additional information by breaking the succession of the actions expresses by other past tenses (perfect and imperfect). By this function of turkish pluperfect, as well as by its function to mark taking up to naration, and to mark the end of a certain situation, we can explain the cases when Serbo-Croatian historical present and aorist is translated to Turkish as pluperfect.