The semantics analysis of event counting in Turkish

This thesis presents a semantic analysis of object and event counting in Turkish. These two readings are analyzed in terms of form-meaning relations. In formal semantics quantifiers are typically analyzed as relation between sets of objects and counting is understood to target objects only. However, it has been observed that in addition to objects, events may also be counted via quantifiers. In this thesis, which focuses on the semantic properties of event counting in Turkish, it is suggested that event counting is possible only when the quantification expression remains in its Verb Phrase (VP) internal position. The denotation of verbs is revised so as to include event variables and the quantifiers are re-defined in order to count events as well as objects. In those cases where the quantificational phrase moves to the sentence-initial position, the object reading becomes more prominent, The relation between the movement of the quantification phrase and object counting is studied on the basis of negated sentences where this relation becomes more visible.