Post-Syntactic Linearization of Yes/No-Question Particle in Turkish

Abstract

This study focuses on the linear order of the yes/no-question particle mI in Turkish. The distribution of mI is intriguing, since it must reverse the linear order with the immediately adjacent morpheme unless the morpheme immediately follows the verb root. To account for such a distribution, the linear order of mI is attributed to the interaction between two post-syntactic concatenation statements under adjacency (Local Dislocation in Embick 2007). Assuming that the question particle spells out the C[+Q] head, two ordered Local Dislocation statements account for the distribution of mI: the first statement holds between the verb root and its immediately adjacent inflectional morpheme; and the second statement is particular to T and C[+Q].