The syntactic position of weakly quantified subjects in Turkish

This thesis investigates the syntactic properties of quantificational subjects in Turkish. We claim that the syntactic position of subjects differ as a consequence of the type of quantifiers inside the subject. Quantified subjects in Turkish are categorized into two groups depending on whether they project a DP-category and this distinction is shown to lead to various syntactic differences. Strongly quantified subjects, which project a DP-layer, move to a position outside of VP in order to check the EPP feature of the relevant functional head (T in matrix clauses and D in embedded clauses). Weakly quantified subjects, on the other hand, which need not project a DP layer, cannot move to a position outside of VP in order to satisfy the EPP requirement and they remain in their base generated VP-internal position. Since the nominative case in Turkish, which is assigned to DP-subjects inside matrix clauses, is a null morpheme, it is not easy to distinguish between case-marked and non-case-marked subjects in matrix clauses. This is why, we focus on nominalized embedded clauses, in which subjects are assigned a visible case, in order to show empirically the syntactic differences between the two types of quantified subjects in Turkish.