Grammaticalization in Turkish: Grammaticalized converbs

This study is a study that simultaneously describes grammaticalized converbs structures in Turkish and classifies these structures in synchronic terms. In Turkish converbs structures formed with simple morphemes (such as -(y)Ip, -(y)ArAk) as well as with more complex markers (such as –DIğIndA) are syntactically linked to the upper sentence and assign meanings such as time, reason, opposition, and situation to this upper sentence. In general, converb subordinate clauses are in front of the main clause and are connected to the main clause as suborders, due to the element order of Turkish. In this way, in addition to the indicator and binding function, it also creates the attached verb structures (main verb + adverb-verb suffix + auxiliary verb). Grammaticalization is the transformation of lexical units into grammatical units and grammatical units into different grammatical units. While this transformation takes place, the unit goes through some processes such as phonetic, semantic, morphological and syntactic changes or losses. In this study, converbs structures formed by grammatical suffixes in Turkish are described simultaneously by scanning different types of texts (story, novel, newspaper articles, etc.). In this study, based on Lehmann's work called Thought on Grammaticalization, the converb structures have been examined in terms of phonetics, semantics, morphology and syntactic. Converbs structures that have become suffixed by going through the grammatical processes, converbs structures that have turned into linkers by connecting the finite sentence to other finite sentence and converbs structures that have turned into descriptive verb structures have been determined. Therefore, in this study, grammatical converbs structures have been examined by dividing them into subgroups and it is thought that this study will make an important contribution to linguistics and Turkology.