Morpho-Syntax of Relative Clauses in Old Anatolian Turkish

Relative clauses, as being fundemantly a topic of morpho-syntax studies, are structures in which the trace of the deleted argument in the subordinate clause is relativised with the head noun. Although Standard Turkish relative clause structures have been extensively studied in modern syntax and semantics studies, Old Anatolian Turkish relative clause structures have been limited to semantic studies until recent times. The current study attempts to examine the historical development of these clauses by subjecting Old Anatolian Turkish relative clauses to morpho-syntactic analysis, and for this reason, it examines the clause structures of the period in comparison with their Standard Turkish equivalents. Although the clauses in Old Anatolian Turkish are mainly discussed in the study on the basis of the subject/object clause distinction, issues such as agreement patterns and relativised gap in the subordiante clauses are also included in the analysis. Accordingly, it is noteworthy that Old Anatolian Turkish relative clauses behave differently from Standard Turkish, especially in terms of the classification of the participle suffixes functioning to establish the above-mentioned clause types and the ability to fill the obligatory gap in the clause.