In its most general form, a sentence topic is defined as the unit that conveys what the sentence is about. Topicalization is the process of making an argument the topic of a sentence, and there are different structures in languages that perform this role. While topic markers exist in the Transeurasian languages of Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, and Manchu, there is no unique morpheme classified as a topic marker in Turkish, which is thought to be one of these languages. The purpose of this study is to see whether Turkish sentence initial noun phrases (NP) with +DAn may mark the topic of the sentence in the same way that sentence initial NPs with “wa” topic marker in Japanese can. In the study, the topic was termed as “aboutness”. "Sentence inital" and "presupposition" were used as operational criteria for determining the topic of the sentence. As a result of the research, we may say that sentence initial NPs with +DAn in Turkish; i) mark the topic on a pragmatic level and the subject on a syntactic level in noun sentences and verb sentences that indicating the resultative aspect. ii) can not mark the subject on the syntactic level unless the topic isn’t marked the on pragmatic level.
Topic, topicalization, aboutness, Japanese wa, Turkish topic marker
