The meaning of the concrete future tense in Turkish and Mongolian languages

This study offers a systematic comparative analysis of the concrete future tense in Turkish and Mongolian, addressing a notable research gap in the aspectual-temporal systems of these languages. The primary objective is to identify and contrast the morphological markers, semantic nuances, and contextual constraints that govern the expression of concrete future events, with particular emphasis on special meanings that form binary oppositions and reveal language-specific functional distinctions. Methodologically, the research employs a contrastive approach, analyzing contextualized examples from both languages, with a focus on the Turkish suffixes -AcAk and -Ir and the Mongolian suffix -nA. The investigation highlights how these morphological elements interact with specific syntactic and lexical environments to convey future events as concrete, non-habitual occurrences. The results demonstrate that Turkish primarily utilizes -AcAk for concrete future reference, while -Ir serves a secondary role in limited contexts, whereas Mongolian relies on -nA to denote events occurring after the moment of speech. Both languages require additional temporal localization through adverbs or discourse context to exclude habitual or repetitive interpretations. Furthermore, the study reveals that verbs expressing concrete future often exhibit Aktionsart properties of either generally unlimited activity or accomplishment. These findings contribute to the field of comparative aspectology by elucidating the intricate relationship between grammatical form, context and semantic interpretation. They provide new insights into the typological characteristics of aspectual-temporal expressions fin Turkic and Mongolic languages.

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