Turkish Causatives Are Recursive: A Response to Key 2013

Abstract

It is claimed in Key 2013 that Turkish, despite allowing multiple causative morphemes on a single complex verb, does not in fact allow causative recursion, where one causing event is embedded by another causing event. This squib argues against Key’s conclusion, using evidence from eventhood diagnostics to show that “double” causatives in Turkish encode two distinct, syntactically represented causing events in addition to the caused event. Thus, Turkish causatives are indeed recursive. This finding supports approaches to productive affixal causatives that allow recursive embedding of the same category over approaches that rely on a fixed functional hierarchy.