The purpose of the study is to discuss basic issues concerning the
existential constructions in Turkish both morpho-syntactically and
semantically as well as referring to any pragmatic concerns involved in the
selection of an existential form. The study is not only a descriptive study that
deals with issues about the basic existential predicates used in Turkish,
namely var and yok, but also sheds light on other lexical items that express
existence in Turkish such as the adjectival counterpart mevcut, and the
verbal existential predicates bulun-, and dur-. With many examples over 50,
it gives learners of Turkish as a foreign language and researchers interested
in Turkish studies valuable insights into the semantic and structural
properties of the Turkish existential operators. In addition to the types of
existential sentences, the study includes a section about tense, aspect and
mood and another section about typological discussion of the Turkish
existentials. A novel argument in the study is that the lexical item söz
konusu should also be included in the predicates as a lexical item that
expresses context-dependent existence. My initial observations suggest that
it is highly context-dependent and nouns in its pivot NPs seem to have
distinct semantic and pragmatic features. The study is a preliminary one as
an initial exploration of sentences formed with söz konusu in which it is
interchangeable with the default form var.