The Argument Structure of Turkish Verbal Reflexives

Abstract

We leverage the rich diagnostic possibilities available in Turkish to probe the representation of verbal reflexivity in this language. We demonstrate that the sole syntactic argument of Turkish verbal reflexives, the surface subject, shows evidence of a VP-internal origin, but also passes diagnostics otherwise only satisfied by deep subjects. We argue that this mixed behavior reflects a movement derivation: a reflexive flavor of the agent-introducing head Voice attracts the sole argument from a low base position to its specifier and derives the reflexive interpretation through VoiceP-internal binding of a free variable. Phrasal movement—a bona fide narrow-syntactic operation—can then be crucially implicated in the derivation of verbal reflexivity.