Turkish change of state verbs in the inchoative-causative alternation

Abstract

In this thesis, I study the principles that govern the inchoative-causative alternation in Turkish. I present the non-unified derivation of change of state (CoS) verbs in Turkish in light of a Distributed Morphology account by Alexiadou (2014). Based on her four-way classification, I first argue that i) unspecified causation is not a conceptual-semantic category in Turkish that has distinct semantic or syntactic properties and ii) externally caused verbs exhibit similar properties with those investigated in other languages. As for the ICCOS verbs, I argue for a two-way split characterized by the verbs’ ability to alternate. Finally, I present novel data that exhibit a dual behavior in the alternation. Based on this, I claim that semantic classes such as internal or external causation are not root-level properties, as assumed in the literature. Instead, I argue that the semantics of a CoS event – which determines a verb’s potential to alternate – cannot be determined until the theme argument enters syntax. Based on the frequency of occurrence of a verb with a given theme argument, I argue that verbs may be compatible with prototypical and non-prototypical CoS events and hence with more than one syntactic environment. I further argue that the different semantic properties of each CoS event type are reflected in syntax in terms of i) whether they project a Voice head and ii) the feature specifications that the given Voice heads make available.