Impersonal Construction and A Few Instances From Turkey Turkish

Impersonal structures are one of the topics that linguistics discusses. The first discussions on the subject can be traced back to Ancient Greek and Roman civilization. However, the spread of this issue has increased today. With this increase, it is seen that the subject is going through a naming phase from impersonal mood to impersonal construction. It is seen that the impersonal structure studies conducted mostly in the West and Western languages refer to impersonal sentences, types, usage areas, features of subjects in impersonal sentences and the modality relationship of impersonal sentences in places. Although Turkish has a rich usage in terms of impersonal structures, it cannot be said that it takes its place in these studies in the world. This can be seen from the literature of the field. Our study also observed in Turkey Turkish giving the place a few impersonal structure is designed to provide a small contribution to this space. The structures chosen within the framework of the subject are formed with units of –mAlI and -mAk, which convey the form and word meanings of necessity and obligation, and do not contain any information about who is the subject in the surface structure, but are positive subjects with deep structure [+ living] and [+ human] characteristics. This limitation was made considering the scope of the subject and article limits. The selection of the two units which have been used in Turkish as a impersonal has also been influenced by the partial mention of their individual features in various articles, books and theses. With the results of the study, it is aimed to present examples from Turkish to literature of the world modality studies and to draw attention to the studies to be done in this field. According to the results of the study, -mAlI form in impersonal construction has been shown to convey these modal meanings like that deontic-obligation, necessity-deontic, necessity-anticipation, objective necessity, estimation, non-necessity in active sentences and objective obligation-deontic, objective necessity, warning-obligation-deontic, objective necessity, necessity-anticipation-ability, obligation-deontic-description, advice-necessity-warning-deontic, advice-necessity-deontic in the passive sentences. In addition the form of –mAk gerek in impersonal construction has been determined to convey the modal meanings like that objective necessity, advice-necessity-warning-deontic, advice-necessity-deontic, obligation-deontic-description in active sentences and objective necessity-warning.

Keywords

Turkey Turkish, linguistic modality, impersonal structure, -mAlI, -mAk gerek