Latent homomorphism and content satisfaction: The double life of Turkic auxiliary –(İ)p bol–

Abstract

This paper argues that the Turkic auxiliary construction –(İ)p bol–, at least in Uyghur and Uzbek, is actually a pair of auxiliaries with distinct meanings. The first auxiliary is described as expressing “full completion” of the event, but its use is highly restricted, to events with incremental or universally quantified themes. Using targeted context-based elicitation, we find that the expression of completion is indirect. Instead, the auxiliary asserts that the event description is homomorphic, in that all of its events are both event-mapped and theme-mapped. Homomorphism requires every part of the theme to undergo a part of the event, and this derives the reported sense of completion.The second auxiliary is not attested in the literature. It applies to all kinds of events, and expresses what we call “content satisfaction,” the conventional implicature that the event as described satisfies some salient propositional content by rendering it true. For instance, it makes part of a plan come to fruition. This plan is presupposed, and the content is accessible through a content-generating function.We apply the methodologies of formal semantic fieldwork to tease these auxiliaries apart, including scope tests that apply differently to the two auxiliaries. Having distinguished them, we suggest new ways to typologically distinguish Turkic auxiliaries and auxiliaries cross-linguistically.