Different Subject Constructions with Depictive Secondary Predicates in South Siberian Turkic

Abstract

Specific syntactic constructions of complex predicates that assign more than one predicate to their semantic subject are well known cross-linguistically. Examples of such constructions are structures such as He returned tired, lived alone, worked as a teacher, etc. They contain two semantic predicates – a main one expressed by a finite verb form, and a secondary one, often expressed by a nominal form or an infinite verb form. Our research has shown that depictive predicates have their structural and functional peculiarities in different South Siberian Turkic languages, compared between themselves and with depictives in Oguz and Kypchak languages. The article deals with South Siberian depictive secondary predicates and describes their semantic and structural types. A special attention is paid to depictive predicates having a subject, different from the subject of the main predicate.