INFLECTED DOUBLED VERBS AND TIME1

Betul Erbasi

Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

betul.erbasi@gmail.com

Abstract

This paper looks into the time and event structure and the relation between these structures as they are implied by Inflected Doubled Verbs (DVs) in Turkish, which require the same verb stem to appear twice in the same clause. DVs are utilized in the language to add an iterative meaning to the lexical meaning of the verb. We present our analysis in three steps: in the first step, a time span is introduced in the following way: DVs require tense-aspect markers to locate them somewhere on the time axis and this location is further restricted by an implicit or explicit time adverb/phrase. This limited time, referred to in our study as ‘(limited) time span/path’, is one which is neither as long as a whole past or a whole future, nor it is as short as an instant of time. Then, the event is iterated and lastly, these iterated events map onto the time span and fill it. It is this time-event mapping structure that we talk about when we utter DVs. This analysis brings together various views on time-event relation Linguistics, Philosophy and also Cognitive Science and is further supported by the kinds of verb types allowed in DVs and it has implications for the syntax of time and event structure.

Keywords: Event, Time, Temporal Adverb, Temporal Phrase, Iteration

0. Introduction

The structure of events and time, and the relation between these two concepts have intrigued people from various fields of study including philosophers, formal and cognitive linguists. For philosophers like Aristotle, the questions of what an event is, how we perceive events and how events and time are related to each other was/is of primary importance. On the more linguistic side, which we will take in this paper, as an addition to these questions, another basic topic of discussion is whether and/or how the event structure and the relation between events and time are reflected in human languages. In pursuit of answers to such questions, the current paper analyzes Inflected Doubled Verbs (DVs) in Turkish, exemplified in (1a-1b)2.

1 I thank my thesis advisors Eser Erguvanlı Taylan and Aslı Göksel as well as my friends for their help

with this paper. I also thank TÜBİTAK for providing me with financial support during my MA studies. 2 We refer to (1a) as Dependant Doubled Verbs (Dependant DVs) and to (1b) as Main Doubled Verbs

(Main DVs). Their syntactic structures are outside the scope of this paper. Let us just note that we take the former as some kind of an adverb modifying the other verb, which we call ‘the main verb’ here (hence, dependant DVs) and we take the latter as the main verb of the clause (hence, main DVs). When we use these terms, we refer to the whole clause. Optionally, we sometimes use ‘DV

(1) a. Her gün yürü-yor-um yürü-yor-um kilo ver-e-m-iyor-um3,45 every day walk-Prog-1Sg weight give-Abil-Neg-Prog-1Sg ‘I keep walking (but still) I cannot lose weight’ b. Kilo ver-mek için her gün yürü-yor-um da yürü-yor-um (da:

Discourse Marker) weight give-Inf for every day walk-Prog-1Sg da ‘I keep walking everyday in order to lose weight’

DVs, which iterate events (see Section 3.2.), require that two fully inflected same verb stems with a verb root, tense-aspect-modality marker and a subject agreement marker appear adjacent to each other in one clause. Our assumption that DVs and the main verb are in the same clause in Dependant DVs is supported by the inability of DVs to stand alone without the main verb, hence proving that they are dependent on the main verb, among others. That DVs in a single clause form one unit is proven by movement tests and their adjacency requirement. We assume that the DVs in (1a) are some kind of an adverbial and those in (1b) are the main verb, both of which have their independent support which we will not discuss here.

The paper is organized as follows: In Section 1, we discuss some studies on time and event structures. In Section 2, we provide our analysis in general terms while in Section 3, we discuss the proposed analysis in more detail. In Section 4, there are the predictions and implications of the analysis. Finally, Section 5 concludes the paper.

1. Events and Time in the Literature

The relation between events and time has been the source of much fruitful discussion in the relevant literature. However, most have taken views that give more weight to one side of the story. Some studies have taken events as basic and time as having secondary importance while others have taken the reverse road. The former view analyzes event structure with respect to their ends, that is, when they end. This line of thought, although proving to be very beneficial in

structures’ to refer to both at the same time. When we say only ‘DVs’, then we refer only to the doubled verbs, i.e. we exclude other elements in the clause including the main verb in Dependant DVs. 3 Throughout this paper, DVs are italic, particles or other elements between the DVs are bold. The

glosses for the second DV is not provided since it is the same as the first. 4 For the purposes of this paper, we ignore the semantically almost identical structures with a

conjunction like ama ‘but’, yine de ‘but still’ or ‘but still’ or öyle ‘that way’ between the doubled verbs and the main verb in Dependant DVs. It is not clear to us at this point whether the structures with and without these conjunctions are the same. We also ignore the particles that can appear between the two DVs in a structure since they do not directly relate to our analysis here. These particles may or may not have a syntactic role, but they certainly strenghten the meaning of DVs. 5 We indicate the relation between DVs and the main verb in Dependant DVs with either ‘and thus’

or ‘but still’ Note that in some of them only ‘and’ or only ‘but’ is more natural but we use the same phrases in all for sake of unity

understanding the nature of events, has not taken into account the structure of time as much. The most frequent use of time in these studies has been concerned with when events end and whether events continue in time or not. Little has been said about how time is structured and whether and how systematically events and time are related to each other. The latter view tries to analyze the structure of time and how time is reflected in languages. Hence, for this view, time is of primary importance.

We believe that both views have their own merits and have contributed to our understanding greatly. However, rather than inclining towards either events or time, we believe we should take the structure formed after time-event mapping takes place into account rather than considering only events or only time. We believe that it is this mapping structure that languages care about most. There can of course be times at which a speaker wants to talk about a specific time or an event. However, in the unmarked cases, languages talk about time-event mapping. This is the idea we will try to support in this paper.

A brief survey of literature on events and time supporting both views is provided below. Since our aim is to give a general idea of these studies, we only provide the basic concepts which are related to our analysis in some way and we do not discuss these studies in detail:

Vendler (1957) is a pioneer of the former line of thought and it has had a profound effect on the relevant literature with its (then) new way of looking at the structure of verb meaning. He divided English verbs into four classes based on some criteria including the time the event in the verb root takes. Among these four classes, Activities like ‘running’ and Accomplishments like ‘running a mile’ take some time to happen or involve periods of time while States like ‘loving’ and Achievements like ‘recognizing’ require a single instant of time to occur. This categorization clearly assumes that events and time are closely related to each other and indeed, Vendler himself says that he is concerned with how these events are related to time in the article. In addition to these remarks, he introduced and used other concepts and tests that are apparently based on time and event relation. One is the much utilized in/for+temporal phrase test which again makes clear reference to instants or periods of time, respectively. In this test, instantive events are compatible with in+temporal phrase while durative events are compatible with for+temporal phrase. Another interesting point Vendler (1957; 1967) discussed was the inclusion of more than just the verb stem in the verb meaning, especially in terms of telicity. However, these ideas do not offer a systematic explanation of the structure of time and of the structure of the relation between events and time.

Krifka (1989; 1998) makes a more systematic analysis of time-event relation within ‘The Mereological Approach’, where how sub-parts of events are related to the whole event is a major topic of discussion. Another major assumption is that telic and atelic expressions in verbs (i.e. having natural end-point or not, respectively) are analyzed parallel to mass and count expressions in nouns,

respectively (Krifka, 1989). The ‘measurability’ of an event plays a crucial role. A quantified object NP such as two books in read two books ‘measures’ an event, which means that it introduces an end point for the event and so does a mass quantized object like a glass of beer in drink a glass of beer. An unquantified object like books in read books, on the other hand, does not introduce an end-point, hence making the event atelic. In telic expressions with quantified objects, ‘the object is subjected to the event in a gradual or incremental manner’ (Krifka, 1989, p.96). In other words, ‘time’, being a one-dimensional path (Krifka, 1998), is limited by the quantized object and the event continues until this limit is reached (i.e. when the object is totally exposed to the action). This analysis suggests in relation to time-event structure that times are one-dimensional paths onto which events map until the end-point, introduced by the quantized objects of verbs, is reached. However, its primary concern is still what events look like (e.g. telic events look like count nouns) and what is included in event structure (e.g. the object of a verb).

On the cognitive linguistic side, Jackendoff (1991) analyses time and event structure roughly in the following way: In the Lexical-Conceptual Structure (LCS) he adopts, events are made up of conceptual constituents within a major conceptual category. The sentence Bill went into the house has the following conceptual structure (Jackendoff, 1991):

Jackendoff (1): [Event GO ([THING BILL], [PATH TO ([PLACE IN([THING HOUSE]) ]) ]) ]

Here, Event, Thing, Path and Place are conceptual constituents (there is also State, Property, Time and Amount, though not relevant for the sentence above) that corresponds to thematic roles in syntax. Hence, thematic roles are actually structural positions in conceptual structure for this view. As for Time, such as until dawn in The light flashed until dawn, Jackendoff (1991) suggests that it puts ‘boundaries’ on a temporally unbounded event and proposes a structure like the following (adapted from Jackendoff, 1991,p. 18):

Jackendoff (2):[EVENT UNTIL/BOUNDED ([EVENTPLURAL/UNBOUNDED ([EVENT

LIGHT FLASHED/BOUNDED])], [TIME DAWN]) ]

The studies so far have attempted to analyze event structure based on their temporal characteristics. Some others have taken time as more basic.

An example of a study that targets the structure of time more explicitly is by Klein (1994; 2009) and it claims that time, just like events, should have its own structure and introduces the concept of ‘topic time’ (similar to Reichenbach’s Reference Time), defined as ‘the time talked about, the assertion time’ (Klein, 2009, P. 8). In Klein’s proposal, there is ‘the time of utterance’, defined as ‘the

time the utterance is expressed’ (Klein, 2009, p.8); ‘the topic time’, defined as ‘the time about which something is asserted’ (Klein, 2009, p.8); and ‘the time of the situation’, defined as ‘the time at which the situation obtains or occurs’(Klein, 2009, p.8). What tense does is to express the relation between the time of utterance and the topic time. Topic time is usually signified by temporal adverbs/phrases and help us to ‘talk about time’. Klein (2009) looks into what he calls ‘clause-internal temporal structure’ and ‘clause-external temporal structure’ and states with regard to these concepts that ‘The expression of time in natural languages relates a CLAUSE-INTERNAL TEMPORAL

STRUCTURE to a CLAUSE-EXTERNAL TEMPORAL STRUCTURE (p. 37)’.

Partee (1984) is also very much concerned with ‘reference time’ in the structure of temporality in temporally linear texts. She suggests that in such relations, the events (but not states) are lined up one after the other in a precedence or (partly) overlapping relation. Each event takes the previous event as some kind of a reference time and with each subsequent event, time is taken one step further. Since the very first event would be uninterpretable without a reference time, it takes ‘reference time’ in discourse, somewhat similar to Klein’s ‘clause-external temporal structure’ . That is, the flow of events are in a close relation to each other when it comes to time such that one establishes the necessary ground for the next one. The reader here is referred to the work for further details.

The path we will take will be a mixture of the ideas above. We will claim based on DVs in Turkish that it is neither event structure nor time that matters the most for languages, but rather it is their relation that matters in unmarked cases. That is, at least in DVs, we do not talk about time nor about the event, but about ‘what we did at that time period’. Hence, the result of the mapping process between time and events is what Dependant and Main DVs express.

In the following sections, we state our proposal and the go on to discuss it in more detail.

2. The Proposal

We propose that in DV structures, there is an obligatory ‘topic time’ in Klein (1994;2009)’s sense, introduced through tense-aspect markers and limited by time adverbs or phrases and it provides a time span into the structure. The verb doubling process iterates/pluralizes the original event by doubling the inflected verb. Then, these multiple same events map onto the time span and fill it. Since in these structures, both a linguistic element referring to time and an iterated event are both necessary, we propose that the language encodes time and event separately but makes these separate dimensions dependant on each other. This means that what we really talk about when we utter a DV structure is the structure formed by the mapping relation between time and events.

3. The Analysis

We would like to present our analysis in three steps: (i) introduction of a time span, (ii) iteration of an event, and (iii) mapping of the event onto the time span. Before we start out with our analysis, however, we would like to show that (i) a time span is obligatory in DVs and (ii) DVs serve to refer to multiple numbers of the same event. The former will help us in the first step of our analysis and the latter will do so in the second step.

3.1. Necessity of a Time Span

In this section, we will show that DV structures necessarily have some kind of reference to time. More specifically, they have a reference to a limited time span and not to the whole past or future nor to a time instant. We show this in two basic steps:

First, we provide data indicating that DVs are good with tense-aspect markers but not readily so with modality markers. This helps us establish the event somewhere on the time axis (e.g. in the past, in the future)6. We support this idea further by showing that DVs with modality markers can be accepted if they have a time adverb/phrase. This implies that as long as the event finds itself a place on the time axis, DVs can be grammatical even in otherwise ungrammatical sentences.

In the second step, we provide evidence that the location of DVs in time should be one of a limited time period rather than the whole past/future or a time instant. The piece of evidence for the exclusion of the former comes from logic rather than the language itself: it does not make sense in most cases that an event takes place for the whole past, for instance. The first piece of evidence for the latter is based on temporal adverbs, which are found in most, if not all, DVs implicitly or explicitly. In general, the temporal adverb/phrase limits the time span of the event (but note that we deal with ‘spans’ and not ‘instants’). A second piece of evidence is provided by the incompatibility of time adverbs/phrases that refer to a single instant of time (such as şimdi ‘now’) with DVs. This shows that the reference made to time in DVs should refer to a period of time.

3.1.1. Location on the Time Axis

The discussion in this section suggests that the obligatory tense-aspect marker locates the event in DVs somewhere on the time line.

6 Based on the pattern in DV structures, we take tense and aspect together since they refer to time

somehow. We acknowledge that the relation of each to time is different. But what matters for us is not how they refer to time but it is that they refer to time. How aspect locates an event in time is a question to be asked, Here, we assume that the speaker talks about the decoding of an event (i.e. aspect of the event) at some time and in this way, aspect relates to time.

Tense-Aspect Markers versus Modality Markers: The following examples show that DVs can be used with all tense-aspect markers (2) but not with modality markers (3) 7,8,9. What is interesting with this pattern is that DVs are good with markers that have some reference to time (i.e. tense and aspect markers) but bad with those that have little or no reference to time (i.e. modality markers):

(2) a. Kitabı okudum okudum bitirdim ‘I kept reading the book (and thus) finished it’ b. Kardeş-im kitab-ı oku-muş oku-muş bitir-miş

sibling-Poss1Sg book -Acc read-RepPast finish-RepPast ‘Apparently, my brother/sister kept on reading the book (and thus) finished (it)’

c. (Ben bil-iyor-um bu) kitab-ı oku-yacağ-ım oku-yacağ-ım (I know-Prog-1Sg this) book-Acc read-Fut-1Sg

bitir-eceğ-im finish-Fut-1Sg ‘(I know that) I will keep reading this book (and thus) I will be able to finish (it)’

d. (Emin-im ben bu) kitab-ı oku-r-um oku-r-um bitir-ir-im (sure-1Sg I this)book-Acc read-Aor-1Sg finish-Aor-1Sg ‘(I am sure that) I read and read this book (and thus) finish it’

e. (Bu kadar) kitab-ı oku-yor-um oku-yor-um bitir-iyor-um (This much)book-Acc read-Prog-1Sg finish-Prog-1Sg (sen de oku bit-ir) (you de read finish-Aor) ‘I am keeping reading so many books (and thus) finish them (you do that too)’

7 In the former group, we include the Past Marker –DI, Reported Past Marker -mIş, Future Marker –

AcAk, Aorist –Ar/-Ir and the Progressive Marker –(I)yor. The latter group consists of the Ability Marker –(y)Abil, Conditional Marker –sA, and the necessity marker –mAlI. We do not utilize the optative since it is not widely used in real life. 8 We utilize the non-negative form of the main verb since the modality markers lend themselves

better to those rather than the negative ones (i.e., it is quite difficult to come up with examples, if there are any, in which the following verb is negative and the verbs contain a modality marker). In these, there is the reading of refuting somebody else’s expectation of the doer of the actions in the DVs. Without this reading, these DVs may not sound natural. 9 We only use Dependant DVs in (2)-(4) for reasons of space and since the pattern discussed in this

section is the same in both Dependant and Main DVs.

(3) a. *(Bil-iyor-um bu) kitab-ı oku-yabil-ir-im oku-yabilir-im bitir- ebil-ir-im (know-Prog-1Sg this) book-Acc read-Abil-Aor-1Sg finish- Abil-Aor-1Sg

‘(I know) I can keep reading this book (and thus) finish this book’

b. ??Kitab-ı oku-sa oku-sa bitir-se book-Acc read-Con finish-Cond ‘If only s/he kept reading the book (and thus) finish it’

c. ??Bu kitab-ı oku-malı oku-malı bitir-meli this book-Acc read-Nec finish-Nec ‘One should keep reading this book (and thus) finish it’

Temporal Adverbs: Supporting the above suggestion that DVs are good with temporally related markers, DVs with modality markers are good if there is a time adverb or phrase (4)

10. In a sense, temporal adverbs/phrases in (4) do what

tense-aspect markers in (2) do. The temporal markers are bold in (4):

(4) a. *(Bil-iyor-um bu) kitab-ı bugün oku-yabil-ir-im oku-yabilir-im (know-Prog-1Sg this) book-Acc today read-Abil-Aor-1Sg bitir-ebil-ir-im finish-Abil-Aor-1Sg ‘(I know that) Today, I can keep reading this book (and thus) finish

this book’ b. (Mesela öykü-müz-de bir adam ol-sa bu) for example story-Poss1Pl-Loc one man exist-Cond this)

kitab-ı tüm gün oku-sa oku-sa bitir-se (ne güzel ol-ur) book-Acc all day read-Cond finish-Cond (what beautiful be-Aor)

‘(Let us say we have a man in our story) and suppose that s/he keeps reading this book whole day (and thus) finishes (it) (How nice it would be)’

c. (Tıp öğrenci-si de-di-ği-n bu)kitab-ı bir gün içi-nde (Medicine student-3SgPoss say-Past-Nom-2Sg this) book-Acc one day inside-Loc

oku-malı oku-malı bitir-meli read-Nec finish-Nec

10 With the exception of ability marker, whose reasons are unclear to us at this point.

‘(Whom you call a medicine student) should keep reading this book (and thus) finish (it) in one day’

Note the contrast between (4d) and (4d’), which shows that the use of a temporal marker clearly improves the grammaticality of DVs with modality markers (Conditional –sA in this case):

d. Şimdi hayat-ta ol-sa da biz-e kitab-ı oku-sa oku-sa anlat-sa now life-at be-Con da we-Dat book-Acc read-Con. explain-Con ‘I wish s/he were alive now and kept reading (and thus) explaining the book to us’

d’. ?*Bize kitabı okusa okusa anlatsa

We take the pattern observed so far to indicate that DVs need to be located somewhere on the time axis. We take ‘time’ as a one-dimensional path/line that conventionally goes from left to right, in line with previous suggestions (e.g. Jackendoff, 1990; Krifka, 1998). Similar to the work of Reichenbach (1947), Comrie (1985) and many others, we assume that the present moment is a point in time and whatever is to the left of it on the time line is in the past and whatever is to the right of it is in the future. Hence, if an event has the past tense marker, it is located to the left of ‘now’ and if it is in the future, it is located to the right of ‘now’. Events cannot be located in the ‘now’ in DVs for other reasons (Section 3.1.2.).

3.1.2. The Nature of the Time DVs are Located at

After establishing the event somewhere on the time axis relative to the present moment, now we look at the properties of the time in which that event is located. We propose that this time should be a limited time period, taking as much time as provided by the temporal adverb/phrase. This excludes the possibility of an event happening for the whole past/future. It also shows that the time of the event should not be as short as a single time instant.

When both Tense-Aspect Markers and Temporal Adverbs/Phrases are Together: There are many cases of DVs where both a tense-aspect marker in the form of a suffix attached on the verb and a temporal adverb/phrase exist in the same clause. We have already proposed that the former establishes the event on the time axis. Now we have just indicated that the latter helps limit this time. Now, let us have a look at (5) in this light (the temporal adverb is bold, her gün here refers to how the event was done in the time period of ‘two months’):

(5) İki ay her gün yürü-dü-m yürü-dü-m kilo ver-e-me-di-m two month every day walk-Past-1Sg weight give-Abil-Neg-Past-1Sg

‘I kept walking everyday for two months (but still) I could not lose weight’

In (5), the past tense marker –di on the verb stem locates the event of ‘my walking/not losing weight’ in the past. The temporal adverb iki ay helps us say that I did not keep walking for the whole past time, but for two months in the past, hence limiting the time span of the past.

We believe that this meaning contribution of both tense-aspect markers and temporal adverbs/phrases is constant in all DVs. Whenever there is the former, it locates the event somewhere in time, and whenever there is the latter, it limits the span of the time of the tense-aspect marker.

This restriction could be necessary due to the following reason. As far as we know the world, events do not take place for the whole past or future. Rather, most (if not all) events take place in a restricted time rather than the whole past or future. This is especially true for DVs as they imply that some agent has to do an action for some time. Since the agents in this world have limited time, energy etc, it is illogical to assume that s/he does something for a whole past or future of his/hers/the world’s. How far the assumption that all DVs are restricted in time can go is a matter for future research. At least some events (like those based on the action of ‘breathing’) could potentially happen for the whole past life of a person. Hence, there may be DVs that takes the whole past or future as its time span. But note that this does not invalidate our point: It is just that the time span is as long as the past of person’s life.

Making this remark, now we suggest that even if there is no overt temporal adverb/phrase, there is a restricted time in DVs. Consider (6):

(6) Kitabı okudum okudum bitiremedim ‘I kept reading the book (but still) I was not able to finish (it)’

In (6), it cannot be the case that I kept reading the book for my whole past and logically I need a more restricted time span for this event to happen. But although the event is located in the past as indicated by the past morpheme, there seems to be no temporal adverb/phrase to restrict it. In such cases, we assume that there is an implicit time span that the speaker has in mind, for instance iki saat içinde ‘in two hours’. But since that time is understood within the relevant context, the speaker does not overtly indicate the time. Hence, the restricted time need not be overtly expressed in the clause.

Incompatibility of Time Instants with DVs: (7) shows that the referenced time should not be a ‘time instant’ but an ‘extended time’, hence a time span:

(7) a. Her gün/*Şimdi Yürü-yor-um yürü-yor-um kilo ver-e-m-iyor-um

every day/*now walk-Prog-1Sg weight give-Abil-Neg- Prog-1Sg

‘I keep walking (but still) I just cannot lose weight’ b. Kilo ver-mek için her gün/*şimdi yürü-yor-um da yürü-yor-um weight give-Inf for every day/*now walk-Prog-1Sg da ‘I keep walking everyday in order to lose weight’

Note that şimdi ‘now (not in the meaning of ‘nowadays’, another meaning of şimdi and one which is compatible with DVs) refers to only the present time instant, hence a single time instant, and is incompatible with DVs. Similarly, frequency adverbs are compatible with DVs since they refer to multiple time instants/spans that ‘extend over some time’ but their non-frequency counterpart is out since it refers to a single time in that context:

(8) a.*Pazar çalış-tı-m pazar çalış-tı-m sınıf-ı geç-ti-m sunday study-Past-1Sg class-Acc pass-Past-1Sg ‘I kept studying on Sunday (and thus) I passed the class’

b.?(Herkes dinlenirken ben) Pazarları çalıştım pazarları çalıştım sınıf-ı geç-ti-m

‘(While everyone had a rest) I kept working on Sundays (and thus) I passed the class’

This shows that the time DVs depend on should be longer than an instant of time. This will be shown to be compatible with the meaning contribution of DVs in later sections.

Now, we move onto the meaning contribution of DVs, which will prove to be complementary to the discussion in this section.

3.2. Iteration of Events

(9a) and (9b) show that the function of DVs is one of iteration (i.e. pluralization) of an event. It means that the same event happens multiple times. When we refer to an event here, we mean it to consist of an action symbolized by the verb stem, an agent based on the obligatoriness of doubling the subject agreement in DVs and also a time marker based on the obligatory doubling of a tense-aspect marker. Hence, ‘reading’ is not an event in our study, but ‘my reading in the past’ is

11. This is not surprising since subjects (Verkuyl, 1972;

1996) and time (Davidson, 1967) have been proposed to be included in the event structure.

11

If we say ‘do an/the action’, it means only the meaning of the verb root (i.e., the action the event

is based on).

(9a) and (9b) have the same lexical elements in them. The only difference between the two is that while the former does not have any DVs in it, the latter has. (9a) can only have the meaning where the agent read the book once. (9b), on the other hand, necessarily includes multiple times of reading the book, as indicated in the translations. In fact, (9b) can be rephrased as Kitabı bir okudum iki okudum (yine de) anlamadım, which translates as ‘I read the book once, then I read it a second time (but still) I did not understand it (lit. I read the book one, I read it two (but still) I did not understand it’

12. This shows that IVD serves to

iterate (or pluralize) events.

(9) a. Kitab-ı oku-du-m anla-ma-dı-m book-Acc read-Past-1Sg understand-Neg-Past-1Sg ‘I read the book (but) I did not understand it’

b. Kitab-ı oku-du-m oku-du-m anla-ma-dı-m book-Acc read-Past-1Sg understand-Neg-Past-1Sg ‘I kept reading the book (but still) I did not understand it’

An important point with respect to iteration is that its nature may change depending on the nature of the action. In semelfactives, only an iterative interpretation is available while in activities like in (9b), both the reading of the whole book multiple times (i.e. iteration) and the reading of one book for a long time (i.e. duration) are possible depending on the main verb and the non-linguistic context. For instance, if the main verb in (9b) was bitir- ‘finish’ only the durative reading would be available since the book would be finished in one instance of reading the whole of it. Based on these observations, we believe that in DVs, there is only ‘iteration of minimal units of action’. In semelfactives, the minimal unit is the whole event, hence iteration of the whole event is the interpretation we get. In the iterative reading of (9a), the minimal event is ‘reading the book’ while in its durative reading, it is probably whatever minimal unit of reading action is (reading a letter, word, sentence, paragraph etc). This point is beyond the current paper but certainly needs further work on but it is important to understand the nature of events.

3.3. Event and Time Span Mapping

So far, we have discussed two main points: (i) a time span introduced by a time morpheme and/or adverb/phrase is needed and (ii) Inflected Verb Doubling iterates events. In this section, we look into the mapping of these events and the time span.

Let us illustrate the proposal in three steps:

12 That DVs are not just repetitions of verb stems is supported by the fact that DVs are restricted to

two of the same verb stem while repetitions do not have such a limit. Hence, although both

repetitions and DVs can be translated the same, they are structurally and functionally different.

Step 1: The event is located in the past or future (but not present since DVs are incompatible with time instants). An explicit or implicit time adverb/phrase introduces a time span (10). In (10), I stands for ‘Initial Point’, where the iterated events start, and F stands for ‘Final Point’, where the iterated events end. This is the time we want to talk about, i.e. ‘topic time’ (Klein, 1994; 2009). Note that we take ‘time span’ as a one-directional path that presumably goes from left to right (Jackendoff, 1996; Krifka, 1998). From now on, when we say ‘time’, we mean the time span introduced by the temporal adverbs/phrases:

(10) I F

Step 2: (11) represents the iterated events (i.e. minimal events). We assume that iteration fills the time span introduced by the time adverb/phrase (10). The events are the same in that they have the same action, the same agent, and also the same time (i.e. whether in the past or future, for instance), indicated by the indices. Assume we have iterated the event five times.

(11) E1i E2i E3i E4i E5i

Step 3: Iterated events map onto the time span and fill it. Note that each iterated event has to follow the previous one and no two iterated events can occur at the same time

13 (Partee, 1984). This is because it is not possible for two

same events to happen at the same time unless in parallel universes. Let us note the quotation of Klein (2009) from the physicist Wheeler here: ‘Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once’.

(12) I E1i E2i E3i E4i E5i F

Now, we have a structure in which time-event mapping have taken place. We suggest that it is this structure that we talk about when we form DV structures, and not the structure in (10) or (11). Namely, we talk about ‘what we have done during that period of time’ or about the fact that ‘I filled this time with this action’. Note that in (12) the events fill the time span but it is also the case that this time span should be long enough to host the iterated events, referring to a reciprocal relation between time and events.

This suggestion immediately derives the meaning of DVs such that it means that ‘I do an action and I do it for a long time’. It also derives the ‘iterative/durative’ aspect and ‘expectation’ modality associated with DVs, which we will not discuss here for reasons of space.

13 There may be time ‘empty time instants’ between two events, namely when none of the iterated

event occurs either because the event is short-lasting or because the time span is too long. We take this to be pragmatically conditioned and do not look into it.

Although we will not provide much detail, let us note in passing that the time span onto which the iterated events map represents a process. The initial and final points in (12) stand for the time the agent starts doing the events and the time that s/he stops doing them, respectively. Although the initial point is not always indicated clearly, the final point is always present in Dependant DVs and is signified by the main verb. In Main DVs, on the other hand, only the process is relevant and neither the initial nor the end parts of the process are indicated necessarily.

4. Predictions and Implications of the Proposal

Time and Event Dependency: The present proposal indicates that at least in DVs, we do not talk about pure time, pure event structure but about the mapping between the two. This roughly translates into talking about ‘what we do at that time’. In this way, it brings together the merits of different studies on time-event relation. We have noted in Section 1 that some of these studies have tried to understand event structure based on their temporal characteristics (e.g. Vendler, 1957, Jackendoff, 1991; Krifka, 1989; 1998) while others tried to understand the structure of time and how events are mapped onto it (Partee, 1984; Klein, 1994; 2009).

We specifically emphasize that whenever there is an event, there is time and vice versa. This is what happens in DVs. Both the iterated events and a time span that need to be large enough to host these events need to be present in the structure. If one is not present, then the whole structure is uninterpretable. This points out to a matching, without which there would be a crash, hence unacceptability (e.g. Example (4d)-(4d’)).

In fact, this claim of ours (i.e. that we talk about ‘what we do at a certain time’) is supported by the findings of cognitive science, where our cognition is believed to rely on space-time mapping to understand the world around us. Jackendoff (1991), mentioned in the literature review section, considers space and time (though in different names for ‘space’) as among the basics of conceptual structure. There are other studies that focus on space and time in human cognition. Casasanto & Boroditsky (2008)suggest that space and time are very much interrelated and form the basics of how humans perceive the world. Hence, it not only brings together two views on event-time relation, it also joins with them the cognitive view. This, we believe, is a step towards a more unified linguistic analysis which takes into account not only the linguistic structure but also other cognitive processes.

Time and Event as Separate Dimensions: One implication that this study brings to light is related to the position of time and events with respect to each other. Specifically, it implies that these two are separate dimensions that come to interact later on. They are separate because they are encoded separately (by the tense-aspect marker-time adverb and iterated event, respectively) but they interact because neither can exist without the other and they need to match.

This also means that time and events have their own existence and structures (time is one-dimensional and events include the agent and tense).

Similar proposals are found in literature. In Smith (1997)’s aspectual theory, there are two levels of aspect: one is lexical (viewpoint) aspect, more universal compared to the second. This is what is known as Aktionsarten

14 of verbs, or the

meaning of the verb itself. The second level is how the speaker chooses to represent this lexical meaning (situation aspect-ST), which is where concepts like perfectivity and imperfectivity are. There is another level she mentions but not discusses in detail: Principle of External Override. At this level, there are temporal adverbs that override the requirements of the first two levels, imposing their own structure on what is already present to which our analysis of temporal adverbs/phrases is similar.

A similar proposal based on Smith (1997) has been made for Turkish temporal adverbs (Güven, 2004) and it concludes that Smith’s three-level aspectual system holds for Turkish as well, and temporal adverbs are the conductors of ‘Principle of External Override’. She comes to this conclusion by investigating three types of bounds: (i) intrinsic, which refers to internally telic verb meaning, (ii) implicit, which refers to the bounds that the speakers puts on an event- in other words (im)perfectivity, and (iii) independent (explicit), which are imposed on an event by temporal adverbs. She regards temporal adverbials as a third parameter ‘because they have at least as much weight as the other two parameters, i.e. viewpoint aspect and STs, do (p. 140)’.

Verbs of Different Aktionsarten: The proposal in Section 3 predicts that verbs that refer to single times and verbs that are not agentive should be out in DVs. The former is because DVs require a time span and the latter is because an agent is needed to actualize the events throughout this time span. This prediction is borne out since among the classical five classes of verbs, namely achievements, semelfactives, activities, accomplishments and statives (Vendler, 1957; 1967)(we also give an example for states), achievements and statives/states are out.

(13) a.*Ankara-ya var-dı-m var-dı-m ev-e ulaş-a-ma-dı-m (Achievement)

Ankara-Dat arrive-Past-1Sg house-Dat reach-Abil- Neg-Past-1Sg ‘*I kept arriving Ankara, but I was not able to reach home’

b. Ayşe düş-tü düş-tü yaralan-ma-dı (Semelfactive)

14 Aktionarten is a German word meaning lexical aspect (literally ‘manners of action’). It basically

refers to the inherent aspect of the verb itself. That is, it refers to whether an action has a natural end-point or not; whether it is durative or not etc. Here, we adopt the classification by Vendler (1957; 1967) with some additions.

Ayşe fall-Past get wounded-Neg-Past ‘Ayşe kept falling but she did not get wounded’ ‘*Ayşe fell (one instance of falling) for a long time (but still) did not get wounded’

c. Para kazan-dı-m kazan-dı-m harca-ma-dı-m (Accomplishment) money earn-Past-1Sg spend-Neg-Past-1Sg ‘I kept earning money (but still) I did not spend (it)’

d. Tüm gün gez-di-m gez-di-m rahatla-dı-m (Activity) all day wander around-Past-1Sg relax-Past-1Sg ‘I kept wandering around all day (and thus) I relaxed’

e. *Çocuk-lar anne-sin-e benz-iyor benz-iyor tembel değil-ler (Stative)

child-Pl mother-Poss.Dat. resemble-Prog lazy Neg-3Pl ‘The children resemble and resemble their mothers (and thus) they are not lazy’

f. *Hep hasta-y-ım hasta-yı-m okul-a gid-e-m-iyor-um (State) always ill-Cop-1Sg school-Dat go-Abil-Neg-Prog-1Sg ‘I keep being in the state of being ill (and thus) I cannot go to school’

Position of Time in Syntax: Although not directly relevant to the focus of this paper, we would like to comment on the syntax of time since it is partially related to the previous discussion on time and event being separate dimensions and also because it may prove to be important for the syntactic theory.

It could be the case that temporal adverbs are not within ‘core syntax’, by which we mean the verb and its arguments. Consider the following examples:

(14) a.*Pazar çalış-tı-m pazar çalış-tı-m sınıf-ı geç-ti-m sunday study-Past-1Sg class-Acc pass-Past-1Sg ‘I kept studying on Sunday (and thus) I passed the class’ b. Pazar ders çalıştım ders çalıştım sınıfı geçtim ‘I kept studying for my lessons on Sunday (and thus) I passed the class’

Although the object, being an argument of the verb, can be doubled with the verb stem, the temporal adverb, which provides the time span for the event

cannot be doubled with it15. This shows that at least the temporal adverb occupies a position distinct from the verb and its arguments, which presumably what constitutes an event. Hence, the time span and the event are different levels in syntax and the former is perhaps operates on the latter by establishing it somewhere in itself.

Similar proposals can be found in the literature: For instance, Bary (2009) states that ‘Tense introduces existential closure and maps the eventuality onto the time axis (p.42)’. She proposes the following schemata (p.42) based on the scope of tense marker, aspect marker and the predicate:

[Tense[Aspect[Predicate-Argument Structure]]]

In fact, this reasoning may point to an adjunct position of temporal adverbs/phrases since adjuncts have been proposed to be inserted late into a structure at the position they appear, i.e. they do not really undergo movement (Lebeaux, 1988). We only point this out and leave it here since the syntax of time is not our primary concern here.

5. Conclusion

In this paper, we have shown that DVs in Turkish, which serve to iterate events, are highly dependent on time such that they require a tense-aspect marker to locate them somewhere on the time axis and a temporal adverb/phrase to restrict the time. This limited time should neither be neither too long (e.g. the whole past or future) nor too short (e.g. a single time instant). The iterated events map onto this time span, thus forming the time-event mapping structure that we talk about when we form DVs. This analysis brings together various views on time-event mapping in Linguistics/Philosophy and also Cognitive Science. It also implies that time and events are separate dimensions in semantics, and perhaps in syntax, but ones which are in close interaction with each other. The analysis here is further supported by the verb types allowed in DVs.

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Casasanto, D., & Boroditsky, L., 2008. Time in the mind: Using space to think about time. Cognition, 106(2), p. 579-593.

15 The doubling of frequentative adverbs like in (8b) is different. In that case, the time span is

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