TITLE:
On Phrasal and Prepositional Verb Projections in Turkish
AUTHORS:
Murat Özgen, Özgün Koşaner
KEYWORDS:
Phase, Agreeing PP, Bare PP, Phrasal Verb, Prepositional Verb
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.5 No.6,
December
9,
2015
ABSTRACT: Radford (1988: p. 101) differentiated between the phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs on both
conceptual and empirical grounds. He suggested eight different tests with
respect to their empirical dimensions. The aim of the study is to seek an
answer to the question as to whether there is a distinction between these two
kinds of verbs within the framework of the tests of Radford (1988) which are applicable to Turkish data (e.g. scrambling, sentence fragment and adverb placement) and the tests we have suggested (preposition alteration, cleft structures and synonymy). The subsidiary aim of the study is to observe
the theoretical implications of such a distinction with respect to the
discussions over the question as to whether PPs do really constitute a phase in
the sense of Chomsky (2001 & subsequent studies). As for the first question, the first
intuitional observations show that there is a distinction between such verb
phrases as “karşi·çik-” (lit. to stand against), and “karçisina·çik-” (lit. to
stand in front of sb.) on semantic grounds. The empirical tests also show that
phrasal verbs do exist in Turkish unlike the common view in literature, and
that they behave in a different manner than prepositional verbs. Depending on
the above-stated empirical tests and intuitive judgments, this distinction may
also provide insights as to the phasehood of PPs in that the agreeing PPs in
Turkish can constitute phases while the bare PPs cannot.