Passivization of intransitive verbs in central Turkic languages

Although the Turkic language had spread diverse geographies and encountered with different cultures and languages throughout the course of historical development they are similar in syntactic structure, but sometimes it can show different tendencies. There are some syntactic differences in passives, especially passives of intransitive verbs in Turkic languages. In this study, the differences in the passivization of the intransitive verbs in the Turkic languages, especially in the Central Turkic languages, were examined. Passivization is the rise of the object which is in the patient role into the subject position, and the subject either lost its syntactic function in the sentence or is added to sentence as an optional element. While the languages allow passivization of transitive verbs, they can follow different tendencies in the passivization of intransitive verbs. In this study, firstly passivization of transitive verbs will be examined. Then distinction of intransitive verbs in the direction of the Perlmutter's Unaccusative Hypothesis will be focused on discussing this distinction in various perspectives. It is examined that to what the class of the intransitive verb is effective in the passivization of the intransitive verbs. On the basis of the transitive verb classification, it is focused on the similarities and differences in passivization of intransitive verbs in the Turkic languages. By examining the characteristics of the intransitive verbs, it has been investigated which intransitive verbs are passivized in the Central Turkic languages. As a result, generally it has been observed that passivization of intransitive verbs like Modern Turkish was not encountered frequently in Center Turkic languages. Key Words Central Turkic languages, passivization, transitivity, intransitive verbs, unaccusative, unergative