Revisiting Complex Predicate Formation in Turkish

Abstract

This study aims to provide a novel analysis for light verb constructions in Turkish that are built by combining a nominal with the verbal element et. Building on the earlier insight that et can both be a light verb and a ‘heavy’ verb in the language, we provide a formally explicit Distributed Morphology analysis that substantiates the idea that the nominal that combines with et is variably either an uncategorized root or an NP. Our evidence for this split comes from the behavior of nominals in the case calculus and with respect to referentiality. Nevertheless, we propose a uniform analysis of et where it realizes an agentive verbalizer head, taking the locus of variation to be in the complexity of the verbalizer’s complement.