Bodily Semelfactives in Turkish: Aspectual and Pragmatic Analysis of Öksür- and Göz Kırp-

Abstract

The study covers aspectual potentials of the Turkish Semelfactive verbs öksür- (cough) and göz kırp- (wink) comprehensively through their concordances in the Turkish National Corpus TNCv3.0. Their common feature in their Semelfactive meanings is that the bodily events expressed with them may be both physiologically and pragmatically motivated, which determines Turkish speakers’ aspectual choices. For öksür-, self-induced coughs are called fake coughs in the study, conveying pragmatic messages with corresponding aspectual shifts. Likewise, göz kırp-, when agent-controlled, conveys certain pragmatic messages. It also has figurative meanings, which causes aspectual shifts. The present article revealed the interactions between aspectual construals of the two verbs and their pragmatic functions and figurative meanings. Corpus data indicated that figurative meanings of göz kırp- are either inadequately defined or missing in the most comprehensive Turkish dictionary of Turkish Language Association (TDK dictionary). The study has lexicographic implications that some improvements and modifications should be made for the entry göz kırp- in the dictionary because aspectual construals are sensitive to different meanings and pragmatic functions. The study demonstrated that accurate aspectual assessments depend on not only sentential levels but also supra-sentential contexts. It was also found that for pragmatic reasons öksür- tends to select preponderantly male subjects.