Comparative examination of adverbial time clauses in Turkish and French

In this study, Adverbial Time Clauses in Turkish and French will be examined comparatively. General aim of this study is to determine similarities, differences and equivalences between those two languages by examining and comparing linguistic units such as nouns that state time, nominal clauses, adverbs, prepositions, prepositional phrases, conjunctions, gerunds, participles and gerund phrases.In Turkey, there are many linguistic studies which illustrate time concept in a language and which have been translated from French. In science world on which interdisciplinary and inter cultural studies have been gaining more and more importance, limited studies conducted in Turkish have encouraged us to conduct such study.In our thesis, language subject and concept, which is an integral part of communication between the individuals, has been examined profoundly and then scientists? thoughts on time concept have been given place. Time and place, two integral parts of our lives, may be discussed in linguistic, social and philosophical dimensions. In our study, the subject, time, has been examined in grammatical aspect with morphological, functional and syntactic approaches.General view is that the time has four legs: precedence of time, sequel of time, synchrony, and continuum. All languages use noun phrases, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and other linguistic phrases which are derived forms of these linguistic units, to illustrate these four concepts. Every language uses phraseology within its typical rules. In the light of this general knowledge, we tried to place our study on for major axes.It has been determined that time concept with noun phrases and adverbs is a rich phraseology. However, it has been observed that French, with the advantage of being a ?flexionnel? language, can express time concept within a wider sense. It has been concluded that phraseologies related to adverbial phrases named gerunds, that have been discussed under an independent roof in Turkish language are interpreted in French within independent categorizations of subordinating conjunctions, gérondif, participe (présent, passé).The subject is illustrated with example sentences in Turkish and French to support our study?s applied part. For time concept that seem very complicated, questions of teachers and learners are tried to be answered in linguistics with lined borders and aims, and short sentences named ?corpus? by comparing these two languages.During our research, it was determined that Turkish is very rich in vocabulary for narrating time concept, as opposed to popular belief. The fact that Turkish is an agglutinative language offers richness in expression together with difficulty in classification. Especially reduplications which are not present in French, brings Turkish accurate and distinctive expressions.Key Words: Time concept, adverbial clause, linguistics, French grammar, Turkish grammar, comparative linguistics.