TURKISH IN TERMS OF HIDDEN SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION ITS PLACE AMONG THE WORLD LANGUAGES

Abstract

Although Turkish is notorious for being a null subject language, the specific type has never been contrasted to the other null subject languages. Thus this paper’s main focus is on revealing all arguments that can go null in Turkish as well as on contrasting Turkish to the other null subject languages. Holmberg (2010) assumes that a definiteness feature resides in the T of rich agreement languages, making it impossible for these languages to have generic null subjects. The results indicate that Turkish defies Holmberg’s (2010) hypothesis that T has a D-feature since necessitative licenses generic null subjects. The paper also sheds light on the question of whether Turkish is an Agree-related null subject language or a marginal pro-drop language. The language has a rich agreement paradigm with subjects, and subjects can go null. However, objects can go null without an agreement paradigm. One may raise the suspicion that the same procedure is operative in null subjects but it is cloaked by subject agreement. The results, however, indicate otherwise. Turkish null subjects are agreerelated