The syntax of Turkish serial verb constructions

Serial verb constructions (henceforth, SVC) are series of verbs that act as a single predicate without any overt marker of coordination and subordination or syntactic dependency marker (Aikhenvald, 2006, p. 1). In this direction, SVCs can encode an event semantically or several closely related events or several successive subevents that can be conceptualized as interconnected. Aikhenvald (2006) states that SVC is mostly seen in creole languages. These structures are also recorded in various languages such as West African, Southeast and East Asian, Amazonian, Oceanian and New Guinean langugaes. SVCs can occur in different forms. In this sense, at least two verbs can come together to indicate a single event, while a single verb can indicate more than one event (Aikhenvald, 2006). When we look at the Turkish literature, it draws attention that there are very few studies on SVC. In this respect, the aim of the study is to determine the Turkish SVC structures and to reveal the syntactic appearances of these structures in Turkish. In this direction, we presented examples from world languages by first considering the SVC literature. Then, we discussed the general features and types of the SVC in the literature for structures that can be handled as SVC in a language, and the difference between these structures from coordination and subordination structures. Considering the studies in the literature, we discussed the SVC structures in Turkish and the aspects of these structures. We examined the Turkish SVC structures taking into account the general features in the literature one by one in detail and tested the Turkish SVC structures with the tests in the literature. In addition, we revealed that SVC structures can be formed with two appearances in Turkish and we have detailed these appearances with examples from world languages. We explained the reason for the variability in the agreement suffixes in the structures in which both verbs are inflected in Turkish SVC appearances. Examining the studies on SVC by critically, we discussed the situations that accord with Turkish and that are problematic in terms of Turkish SVC. As a result, we presented three different syntactic analysis proposals regarding the internal structure of these structures by considering that there are three types of SVC in Turkish SVC, namely Case 1, Case 2 and Case 3.