Eski Anadolu Türkçesinde Epistemik Kiplik: Kısas-ı Enbiya Örneği

Abstract

In linguistics, the relationship between a speaker and his/her utterance is explored through modality. Modality is marked in a statement via syntax, modal verbs, imperatives, verbal inflection, and modal particles. Because modality is considered a topic of semantics, it was categorized in various ways in previous literature. Initially, modality was conceptualized in the frameworks of possibility and necessity in philosophy. In later studies, with the application of epistemic conceptualization in natural languages, it became clear that modality can not be limited to these two philosophical concepts (Bybee, Fleischman 1995: 4). In modern studies conducted to explore the subcategories of modality, the subcategories: epistemic modality, dynamic modality, and deontic modality were proposed; all founded on the two major themes, possibility and necessity. In the present study, Palmer’s (2001) and Declerck’s (2011) categorizations are adopted, and epistemic modality is further explored. The study focuses on the semantics themes: possibility, necessity, faith, narration, rumor, inference, responsibility, estimation, suspicion, evidence, and certainty, etc. The topic of the study is broadly defined as epistemic modality; the interpretations of a speaker over the factuality of an utterance or the interpretations of a conscious being over the factuality of a given utterance, and the linguistic marking of this process (Rentszch 2013). In this conceptual framework, the study explores the specified factuality value located on the epistemic scale between speculative and not factual yet. The utterances that make up the corpus that the present study uses come from a seminal and rather lengthy text; Kisas-i Enbiya. (Yilmaz, Demir, Kucuk, 2013). The reasons to choose this manuscript as the corpus of the study are: a) in 2013, the manuscript was transcribed in the Latin alphabet along with a dictionary section, b) it is a lengthy manuscript with a variety of different texts, and c) it offers texts that are rich in lexical repertoire, morphing words, word order, and content, which will help researchers conduct an in-depth analysis on the research questions. In order to clarify some parts in the study, other resources in the literature are also consulted. Because poetry texts have a unique discourse and fewer statements for semantic analysis, narrative texts are used more often in the example excerpts. With this study, the topic of mood and modality in Old Anatolian Turkish which has been discussed since Aristoteles. will be explored. The analysis also considers its functions in statements marked with epistemic modality and their factuality values that are specified on an epistemic scale.