Abstract
FUNCTIONAL AND PRAGMATIC DIFFERENCES OF TURKISH {-mIş} CONSTRUCTION IN THE UTTERANCES OF KURDISH-TURKISH BILINGUALS
The long term and intensive language contact between Turkish and Kurdish has caused to settle Turkish verbal noun structures, constructed by Turkish origined {-mIş} into Kurdish linguisttic repertoires of the Kurdish-Turkish bilinguals to be used mostly in predicative domains. {-mIş} constructions have different functions than they are in Turkish and their main contributions are to connect not only Turkish verbs to the Kurdish auxiliary verbs but also combined voice suffixes. Depending on bilingualism levels and Kurdish literacy of the speakers domains of use and frequencies of {-mIş} could increase or decrease by bilinguals. But it is clear that pragmatically these constructions provide important communicative competencies for bilingual speakers in multilingual settings. The patterns with {-mIş} seem like settled items long time before and involve important informations on contact induced changes of functional elements. Their functions and pragmatic use by bilinguals require respectively diachronic explanations and investigations of multiple benefits of communication in multilingual settings. In these respects {-mIş} in bilingual utterances could be assumed as “contact induced predicative connectors” that have resemblances of Persian izafet particle and involving old Turkic remarks.
Keywords
Turkish –mIş construction, -mIş in contact, Turkish-Kurdish contact, -mIş in Kurmanji Kurdish, trans
