Long Distance Scrambling out of ECM Clauses in Turkish

Author : Sinan Cakir

Abstract :The study focuses on the extractions out of exceptional case marking (ECM) structures in Turkish. It analyzes the arguments and adjuncts that originate within the ECM constructions and move to the verb final position. In this regard, scrambling to the background position of both embedded and main clauses are examined. The data of the study were collected through three data collection tools: a grammaticality judgment test, a self-paced reading task and a missing word completion task. 255 participants (86 men, 169 women, average age: 20.4) who are attending at several universities of Turkey took part in the study. While selecting the participants, it was ensured that they did not receive any formal education on the target subject-matter. For the cases that involved scrambling to the background position of the matrix clause, the findings of the study demonstrated that all target structures were less acceptable compared to the control sentences, though some of them were relatively better than the others. In this regard, there exists a reverse asymmetry between subjects and objects with respect to Type 1 and Type 2 ECM clauses. In turn to adjuncts, they yield problems in both types. The study puts forward that the source of the problem is divergent depending on the given structure and the constituent in question. With regard to scrambling to the background position of the embedded clause, all target structures got poor ratings and processing times compared to the control sentences. No matter the backgrounded constituent is a subject, object or adjunct, the movement results in ungrammaticality, which indicates that ECM clauses lack CP layers.

Keywords :Backgrounding, ECM, Scrambling, Turkish.

Conference Name :International Conference on Linguistics and Applied Linguistics (ICLAL-25)

Conference Place Kranj, Slovenia

Conference Date 4th Jul 2025