On Çek- as a Light Verb -A Contrastive View from Japanese-

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate if the Turkish verb çek- also has the role as a light verb in Turkish (i.e fotoğraf çek-, fotokopi çek-, çile çek- etc). In this study I also examined gapping of light verbs in coordination constructions and by using the same test on some çek- constructions I tried to improve that some çek- constructions have the same properties as the well-known light verbs like et-, ol-. We can observe the the same fact concerning gapping as in the case of çek- as a compound, neither backward nor forward gapping is unacceptable.
In the second section I also investigated the çek- compound when it takes double objects, which might be unacceptable to some Turkish speakers, but they could be find in the Turkish youth language, which is an evidence of çek’s grammaticalization process. It is very interesting that double objects can be find also in the well-known light verb constructions as hasta-yı muayene et- (to examine the patient) etc.
It follows from this that some çek- constructions have a role as a light verb, some have idiomatic meanings and most of them have heavy verbal features. This study also shows some Japanese light and heavy verb data to make a comparison.