Conditionals in Turkish

In this study, which is based on the presupposition that in conditional sentences , the area of study in many disciplines like linguistics, psychology and philosophy, protasis and apodosis clauses determine the discourse function(s) of these sentences, Turkish conditional sentences are aimed to be described in terms of their discourse features and functions. To meet this target, the answers to these questions have been sought; ?What are the positions of protasis and apodosis/main clause in Turkish conditional sentences??, ?What are the functions of the conditional clause according to the positions of the protasis and main clause?? and ?What is/are the discourse function/functions of the conditional clause according to the positions of the protasis and apodosis? How do this/these funciton/functions affect discourse coherence? In order to answer these research questions a corpus which consists of 8 different detective novels were studied, and these novels were analysed according to Declerck and Reed?s (2001) approach to the conditional clauses and Chang-Bong?s (2001) studies which is based on Prince (1992). According to the findings of our analysis are as follows:1.In Turkish conditional sentences `protasis + apodosis order is the unmarked order.2.According to the unmarked order, Turkish conditional clauses mostly undertake the purely case-specifying function and maintain this through the conditional clauses named `purely case-specifying P-clause specifying the circumstances under which the perception of the Q-situation may take place?. The result got accordingly shows that the conditional information can be processed with the help of the case-specifying function of Turkish conditional clauses which occupies the unmarked order in the in listener/reader?s mind. According to the marked order, Turkish conditional clauses mostly assume the comment function by encoding ?Hedging-P conditionals? and the speaker presents the content of the apodosis via the functions of protasis.3.Turkish conditionals undertakes a lot of different discourse functions (in the unmarked order; most frequently as ?counter idea presentation? and ?repetition of preceding proposition presuppositionally?; in the marked order; most frequently as ?the interpretation of the preceding comment?, ?making an obliged suggestion? and ?a turn-taking strategy?) and they carry out the discourse functions in question by encoding `inferrable information, given information + new information? unmarked information structure order and thus, they contribute to strenghten discourse coherence. Hence, the presuppositions that we set forth in the beginning of our study were confirmed with the findings that had been obtained by the corpus analysis.