Descriptive gaps: The case of transitive <i>et-</i>

Abstract

The Turkish transitive verb et- suffers from a considerable lack of attention in the linguistic literature. It is usually analysed as the pre-eminent means to form a composite verb on the basis of a noun or adjective. On the other hand, its status as a pure auxiliary is doubtful, given the fact that it pops up as a participle in relative clauses and that it governs the accusative for definite objects. Whereas it is often assumed that ziyaret ‘visit’ is fused with et- into the derivation ziyaret et- (-i), i.e. accusative, as an unbreakable unit, constructions such as Bu seyahat-i et-mek üzere kayığ-a bin-di-m ‘I boarded the caique in order to make this journey’ with accusative marked ziyaret-i and relative clauses such as Türkiye’ye et-tiğ-im ziyaret ‘the trip I made to Turkey’ seem to contradict this assumption. In connection with the partial replacement of et- ‘to do’ by yap- ‘to do/make’ in recent decades, especially among speakers of Turkish in the diaspora, the question may be raised whether the popularity of et- as an independent transitive verb on the internet can somehow be linked to this phenomenon.