Complementation patterns in Ötämiš Ḥāǰǰī’s Čingiznāmä: A typological approach to subordination in Middle Turkic

Abstract

This article investigates complement clauses, i.e., clauses entering an argument slot of a complement taking predicate, in Ötämiš Ḥāǰǰī’s Čingiz-nāmä , a 16th century Middle Turkic text from Khiva which demonstrates Qipchaq linguistic features. Three major classes of complementation will be investigated: direct quotations, propositional-type complement clauses, and state of affairs-type complement clauses. The multitude of surface forms will be encoded into abstract structural types which enable structural comparison. The aim is to establish the inventories of expression types for each class, to give representative examples for each type, and to compare the typological inventories. Besides the formal aspects, semantic issues are investigated as well. The aim of the paper is to provide data for synchronic comparison, and ultimately to contribute to our understanding of the evolution of the variation in clausal complementation among the Modern Turkic languages.