Turkish verbs of falling

The article presents the results of a corpus analysis of verbs expressing the idea of uncontrolled downward motion in Turkish. The study focuses on 5 lexical items. The dominant verb of the semantic field düşmek covers nearly all types of situations of falling including motion from a higher surface to a lower one, loss of vertical orientation, detaching, falling of precipitation and downward motion of multiple subjects. The only situation that cannot be described with düşmek is falling of buildings (i.e. falling with destruction). The four other verbs have narrower semantics and specialize in a certain class of subjects or manner of motion. Yıkılmak fills the gap left out by the dominant verb, viz. it refers to buildings that collapse when falling. Each of the three other verbs overlaps in its coverage with düşmek and represents a more frequent means to express the corresponding event: yağmak is used for falling of precipitation, dökülmek describes falling of liquids or bulk solids and may be applied to multiple subjects of other kind, devrilmek refers to a loss of vertical orientation.

Semantic shifts of these verbs are in line with typological patterns revealed for the domain of falling. Predictably, most of the metaphors use düşmek as their source, e.g. less/bad is down, falling into a state, loss of functionality in humans, the onset of a season, elimination. The derived meanings from other verbs include loss of non-material values, e.g. smb’s authority, hope, etc. (yıkılmak), appearing in abundance, e.g., of drubs, kicks, support, lie (yağmak), free flow of abstract entities, e.g. words, music, etc. (dökülmek), overthrow of power (devrilmek).

The article also briefly discusses 3 verbs from adjacent domains, which may in some contexts come close to the idea of falling: inmek ‘go down’, batmak ‘sink, submerge’, and dalmak ‘submerge, dive’.