Wh-intensification at the Morphology-pragmatics Interface: An Indirect Look at Turkish through Translations into Polish

Authors:

• Annette Herkenrath

Abstract

Based on a parallel corpus of contemporary novel beginnings, this study looks at two illocutionarily intensified wh-expressions, of syntactic interest in Turkish while morphological in Polish – discourse-pragmatic in both: wh… ki and wh-ż. With an eye on morpho-pragmatic interface discussions, the study explores how morphological marking in Polish helps to identify contexts in the Turkish original that a translator-as-reader interprets as illocutionarily intensified. In a first take, it is quantitatively established that the overlap between the two markers is smaller than expected: most wh-ż-constructions are translations of bare wh in Turkish and at the same time, most wh… ki-constructions in the Turkish originals are translated into Polish as bare wh. Still, a closer look at context reveals that a certain quality of illocutionary intensification is given to all the findings; in many cases, intensification also brings about a dismissal of the question. Structurally, the approach has helped with a closer look at alternative strategies of wh-intensification in both languages, including wh-fronting and modifiers as well as lexical means and contextual cues. Since the alternative strategies, in particular wh-movement in Turkish, have often been a topic of complex discussions, the parallel-corpus method proves helpful in identifying constructions deserving of a closer look