Subject constraints of verbs in the Turkish language

This study primarily presents a detailed analysis of subject constraints of simple verbs in Turkish language. The subject constraints of these simple verbs were determined, and the data obtained were tested through corpus technique. In this context, the study consists of two sections and a conclusion. In the first section, subject definitions and classifications in the literature, as well as verb definitions and classifications (particularly Aktionsart-based approaches), were established to set the boundaries. In this section, the Aktionsart properties of verbs, which refer to the syntactic-semantic structures related to the inherent aspectual nature of verbs and the manner and process through which the action is realized, were discussed in detail. Thus, an attempt was made to outline the framework of subject constraints of verbs based on the literature. In the second section of the study, simple verbs were identified by scanning the Contemporary Turkish Dictionary TDK, verbs with voice morphemes (passive, causative, reciprocal, and reflexive) were separated, and subject constraints were determined based on the definitions of the verbs. During this process, the subject constraints template developed in the theoretical section was utilized. The Turkish Word Frequency Dictionary was used to select the verbs to be analyzed. Sample sentences of verbs listed in the top three thousand in the dictionary were taken from the Turkish National Corpus (TUD) to be tested. The meanings of the examined verbs in the TDK were first presented. Subsequently, sample sentences queried in the corpus were put according to subject categories. In the analysis section, the sample sentences of the relevant verb were classified according to subject categories related to their meanings in the dictionary, and their proportions were presented in a table.