Against the Mood Account of Turkish Nominalizers

This paper addresses the issue of what determines the choice of nominalizer in Turkish nominalized clauses and presents data that discredits the account that the Turkish nominalizers -DIK and -mA mark indicative and subjunctive moods respectively. It then presents several pieces of evidence suggesting that -DIK marks the clause as a proposition, whereas -mA induces an eventive/stative reading. This conclusion is drawn from (i) the contrasting distribution of either nominalizer in the non-head position of compounds headed by proposition- vs event-denoting nominals, (ii) the selectional behavior of predicates that require subjunctive complements, and (iii) the (im)possibility of either form to occur in the subject position.