Formal and Semantic Hierarchy of Turkish Transitive Verbs

Abstract

In Turkish, transitivity is defined according to both syntactic and semantic criteria. However, the types of transitional verbs and sentences, determined by the semantic and syntactic criteria, often contradict each other. Sometimes, a verb or sentence which meets the semantic condition may not satisfy the syntactic or vice versa. There are two reasons cause this contradiction. The first is due to the reason for adherence of transitivity to strict syntactic qualification and not taking the specific encoding situation of prototype transitivity [NOM-ACC] into account or ignoring the frames out of valency-related verb-meaning codification. The second is the restraint of transitivity in prototype transitivity as a rigid semantic concept. However, transitivity is a gradual and multifactorial concept. Therefore, it is not possible to talk about a single transitivity, hence a single verb type and a single case frame in which transitivity is encoded. There are different degrees of transitivity, and they can be labeled in the range of high degree to low degree transitivity. The degrees of transitivity in Turkish are formally coded up to a point with different case frames. It has been investigated which phases of transitivity in Turkish and how far different degrees of transitivity can be coded with variable case frames in this work. Turkish transitive verb hierarchy and related classes are proposed based on semantic and syntactic parameters. The transitivity scale of Turkish and the semantic map of verb classes will be formed as the final stage of this study.