Relative Constructions in Turkish

Although Turkish relative constructions have figured prominently in both studies on Turkish grammar as well as in cross-language studies on relative constructions, there has yet to be a comprehensive treatment of subject. The present study is an attempt to fill that gap by providing a detailed, data-driven investigation of the structure. The theoretical framework is functional/typological, but other theoretical perspectives are also afforded due consideration. Topics covered include the nature of participles, subject expression in relative clauses, the role of relative clauses compared to other adnominal attributes, the diachronic emergence of participial relative clauses, discourse-strategies with non-participial relative constructions, noun phrase accessibility, case recovery or construal of relative clauses, and the conditions determining the choice of participle. The text is richly illustrated with several hundred fully analyzed examples as well as an appendix giving the full details of the text corpus along with some quantitative analysis.