Functionalization of Participle Suffixes in Azerbaijani and Turkish Languages

Abstract

In modern Azerbaijani and Turkish, the participle is a particular verb form. This form differs from the conjugated forms of the verb and other non-conjugated particular forms (gerunds and infinitives) regarding its lexical-semantic features, morphological characteristics, and syntactic functions. In both languages, participles precede nouns and substantivized words, indicating the attributes and qualities of the objects expressed by those words. Participants enter an attributive relationship with the words they modify and do not change according to tense, person, or number.

Participles are a category prone to substantivization. They quickly become nouns, like other parts of speech, especially adjectives, and as a result, they can function as various parts of the sentence. The features related to the participles in the Azerbaijani language are also manifested in the modern Turkish language.

In the Turkological literature, there are also considerations in which participles are evaluated as independent parts of speech. Some linguists characterize participles in Turkic languages based on their general semantic-grammatical features, considering the possessive structure of the predicate, i.e., the predicative composition. However, this does not align with the grammatical structure of Turkic languages, and thus, participles cannot be considered independent parts of speech.