Türkçenin tarihi boyunca –DIK ekli yan tümcelerdeki özne uyumu

In this thesis, subject case and subject agreement in -DIK argument subordinate clauses are explored throughout the history of Turkish. Definiteness hierarchy is the determining factor in the genitive marking of the overt internal subjects of complement and non-subject relative clauses in Modern Turkish: specific subjects bear genitive whereas non-specific ones appear in the nominative. This state of affairs was not the same across the history of Turkish. The quantitative investigation of a diachronic corpus that I created manually reveals that, while genitive marking was overall lower, the animacy hierarchy played a crucial role in the subject case of -DIK subordinate clauses until the eighteenth century. At this point definiteness hierarchy became the prominent factor. This diachronic change was discussed in the light of an acquisition-based model to language change (Andersen, 1973; Lightfoot, 1976). In particular, it is suggested that due to parametric ambiguity and lack of sufficient data, the animacy hierarchy, which is the predictor in genitive marking, was reanalyzed as definiteness hierarchy by a group of language acquirers around the eighteenth century. In addition, the thesis also investigates diachronic changes in the nominal agreement on the verb of subordinate -DIK clauses. The thesis shows how often and since when nominal agreement has been used in all subordinate -DIK clause types. For each subordinate -DIK clause type, the increase or decrease in the existence of the nominal agreement has been provided numerically.