ASPECT AND MODALITY IN NEGATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF TURKISH AND JAPANESE

The existence of perfect aspect of the Trans-Eurasian languages is among the most controversial issues of altaistics and linguistic typology. A major problem is the distinction between temporal and aspectual interpretation on the affirmative constructions. It is a well known fact that most of the Trans-Eurasian languages lack of an overt perfect aspect marking in affirmative constructions. Nevertheless, this does not mean that these languages completely lack an overt perfect aspect marking. The present article studies two temporal and aspect markers relating Japanese to Turkic in negative constructions and tries to attempt to show their modal functions under negation which can not be observed in the affirmative counterparts. In the comparative part of this study, the shared properties of temporal suffix -ta (Japanese), -di (Turkish) and progressive marker –tei (Japanese), -yor (Turkish) are assessed in terms of form, function. The article concludes that it is negation that effects the role of temporal and aspectual suffixes and gives modal interpretation to the constructions which has a completely different behaviour than the affirmative counterparts.