Grammaticalization in Tuvan Turkish

This thesis is a historical and comparative study of grammaticalized structures in Tuvan Turkish on the basis of grammaticalization theory. On the basis of the theory of grammaticalization, the development of verbs and nouns in lexical category of Tuvan Turkish from lexical units to grammatical units over time and their development into dependent units and the development of pronouns in the grammatical category from less grammatical position to more grammatical position were investigated, it is aimed to evaluate the grammaticalized structures developed from verb, noun and pronoun units. Grammaticalized constructions in Tuvan Turkish undergo the processes of desemanticization, expansion, decategorization and erosion during their development. It is seen that all of the structures examined undergo the processes of desemanticization expansion and decategorization. The erosion process, on the other hand, is not seen as a compulsory process that must be undergone in this process, and it frequently occurs on structures with high textual frequency. As a result of all these processes, changes and losses occur in the phonological, morphological, semantic and syntactic structure of the grammaticalized construction. As a result, the level of autonomy of the grammaticalized construction decreases, while the degree of grammaticality increases. The textual frequency of the s constructions analysed in Tuvan Turkish is directly proportional to the grammaticalisation variation. The unit in which the most variation is detected is verbs. The verbs can become auxiliary verbs and become grammaticalized as aspect-tense and modality markers, they can become copular by linking the subject and the predicate in the sentence, or they can change their syntactic properties and develop into units in intermediate and grammatical categories such as adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions. In the case of nouns, it is observed that the most grammaticalisation variation occurs in words with high textual frequency. Nouns that can be used as substitutes for pronouns can be grammaticalised as person-number markers in the predicate, but can also be used in more grammatically functions. The phenomena of grammaticalisation of pronouns in most of the languages are exemplified in Tuvan Turkic. In this thesis regarding the grammaticalization of verbs, the meanings of the verbs examined were given and then grammaticalization variations have been evaluated, such as auxiliary verbalization, morphologization as aspect-tense markers, grammaticalization as mood markers in predicates, copularization, adverbialization, converbialization, conjunctionalization, and prepositionalization. In the context of the grammaticalization of nouns, the structures that grammaticalized as person-number marker, and mood markers in predicate, as well as those that grammaticalized as copulas and conjunctions, have been investigated. Concerning the grammaticalization of pronouns, the focus has been on the grammaticalization of personal pronouns as person-number markers in predicate.