Title: Reflexivization and Movement in Turkish Verbal Reflexives

(joint work with Lefteris Paparounas)

Abstract:

A central question for syntactic approaches to the argument structure of verbal reflexives (e.g. Embick 2004, Wood 2015; cp. e.g. Grimshaw 1982, Reinhart & Siloni 2005) concerns how a single syntactic argument can receive the interpretive properties associated with two different theta-roles. Focusing on Turkish verbal reflexives, we argue for a movement-based approach to construal as an answer to this question, applying to both figure and ground reflexives (Key 2021). We first show that these verbs are syntactically intransitive and semantically monadic, with a single DP argument in their structure. Diagnosing the position of this sole argument reveals a striking mixed behavior: the sole argument behaves as internal for some syntactic diagnostics, and as external for others. We argue that this mixed behavior follows from a movement process of a single argument from one thematic position to another, thus deriving the assignment of two thematic roles to the sole argument (cp. Hornstein 1999 for control; Deal 2013, 2017 for external possession).