The Turkish NP
Željko Bošković, Serkan Şener · 2014
This chapter investigates the Turkish Noun Phrase (NP), with emphasis on the structural position of possessors, demonstratives, numerals, and adjectives as well as the interpretation of possessors in different contexts. It investigates ellipsis within Turkish NPs, which turns out to be a particularly useful tool for probing NP structure, due to rather strong constraints on such ellipsis that Turkish displays. The chapter starts by considering how Turkish, an article-less language, fares with respect to Boskovic's generalizations regarding Determiner Phrase (DP)/NP languages. It shows that Turkish patterns with NP, not DP languages, which has an important impact on the analysis based on c-command tests, linear order, interpretation, and ellipsis of NP-internal elements. The chapter establishes an outline of NP structure in Turkish, based on c-command tests, word order, and the interpretation of possessors. It concludes that a functional projection is present above NP in classifier and possibly predicate constructions. Keywords: article-less language; Boskovic's generalizations; determiner phrase (DP) languages; Turkish Noun Phrase (NP)