INTERPRETATIONS OF TURKISH REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS KENDI AND KENDISI

Turkish has two different forms of reflexive pronouns: kendi (self) and kendisi (self-3sg). In the field of theoretical linguistics, there are different views regarding the binding relations of these reflexives. One view is that kendi and kendisi can be bound with both the subject of the embedded clause and the subject of the matrix clause. According to another view, kendi is more likely to be bound with the subject of the embedded clause, whereas kendisi can be bound with either the subject of the embedded clause or the subject of the matrix clause. In order to provide evidence for the reflexive interpretation and confirm the validity of existing linguistic analyses in Turkish, we conducted a forced preference task with 64 native speakers of Turkish. Our findings suggest that the interpretations of kendi and kendisi are different in Turkish and that kendi is much freer than kendisi.