7TH RUMELİ [LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND TRANSLATION STUDIES] SYMPOSIUM
On different imperative forms in Turkish
Yayıncı:
RumeliYA Yayıncılık
It is well-attested that there are imperative constructions in every natural language. This paper is concerned with various imperative forms in Turkish. The main objective here is to find out why there exist different imperative forms and whether there are and differences as well as similarities between these forms in terms of their syntax and use. Based on previous descriptive work and new data, it is shown that in addition to the canonical imperative form where the subject is omitted and the verb appears in its bare form (e.g., git ‘go’), there are two further imperative forms in the language. These two forms are morpho-syntactically more complex in that the second contains the conditional marker, person agreement and an interjection clitic (e.g., git-se-n-e ‘go, why don’t you!), while the third form lacks the interjection altogether (e.g., git-se-n ‘(I wish you) go’. The analysis shows that there are certain differences between these forms in the sense that they are not in syntactically complementary distribution with one another. Also, their respective use seems to significantly vary with respect to what kind of speech acts they are associated with and how much directive force they carry. This suggests that they are different form each other in terms of notions that have been investigated in previous studies on imperatives such as (speaker) authority, decision problem and effective preferences.
