Complement clauses and pragmatic islands in Turkish

Sinan Çakır
Konya Necmettin Erbakan University

Abstract. The study focused on the complement clauses in Turkish by targeting at the Factive Island Constraint and Negative Island Constraint. According to the findings, all complement clauses in Turkish seem to be subject to a weak Complex DP Island Constraint. The degradation observed in the acceptability of the interrogative sentences that are subject to FIC or the NIC should stem from pragmatic reasons. As a matter of fact, the weak Complex DP Island Constraint that is assumed to hold for all complement clauses seems to be one of the reasons for the degradation observed in such sentences.

Keywords: generative syntax, Turkish, wh-constructions, island constraints, argument & adjunct asymmetry

For citation: Çakır S. Complement clauses and pragmatic islands in Turkish. Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters. 2019. Vol. 2, iss. 1. Pp. 142–159.