Turkish phonology
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| Turkish language |
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The phonology of the Turkish language describes the set of sounds and their relationships with one another in spoken Turkish. One characteristic feature of Turkish is a system of vowel harmony that distinguishes between front and back vowels. The majority of words in Turkish adhere to a system of only having one of the two groups. Consonants are also affected, with palatal stops being present with front vowels and velar stops existing with back ones. Further details are given below.
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[edit] Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | (c) | (ɟ) | k | ɡ | ||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | ɣ | h | ||||||||
| Affricate | tʃ | dʒ | ||||||||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | |||||||||||||||
| Approximant | (ɫ) | l | j | |||||||||||||
The phoneme /ɣ/ — usually referred to as yumuşak g ("soft g"), ğ in Turkish orthography — actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.[1]
In native Turkic words, the sounds /c, ɟ, l/ are in complementary distribution with /k, g, ɫ/ respectively, the former set occurring adjacent to the front vowels /e, i, œ, y/ and the latter adjacent to the central and back vowels /a, ɯ, o, u/. In foreign borrowings and proper nouns, however, they are constrative. These phones are not distinguished in the orthography, in which both sets are written k, g and l.[2]
When a vowel is added to nouns ending with postvocalic k, the k becomes ğ by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in p and t, which become b and d, respectively, with the addition of a vowel.[3]
[edit] Vowels
| IPA chart for Turkish vowels |
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The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, ü.[4] There are no diphthongs in Turkish and when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords or old Ottoman words, each vowel retains its individual sound.
| Vowel sound | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IPA | Description | IPA | Orthography | English translation |
| i | close front unrounded | /dil/ | dil | 'tongue', 'language' |
| y | close front rounded | /ɡyneʃ/ | güneş | 'sun' |
| ɯ | close back unrounded | /ɯlɯk/ | ılık | 'mild, tepid' |
| e | close-mid front unrounded | /jel/ | yel | 'wind' |
| œ | open-mid front rounded | /ɡœr/ | gör- | 'to see' |
| a | open central unrounded | /dal/ | dal | 'branch' |
| o | close-mid back rounded | /jol/ | yol | 'way' |
| u | close back rounded | /utʃak/ | uçak | 'airplane' |
Although a central vowel phonetically, /a/ is phonologically a back vowel based on its patterning with other back vowels in harmonic processess and the alternation of adjacent consonants (see above).
[edit] Vowel harmony
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The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being three-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by three features: front/back, rounded/unrounded, and high/low. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality"[5], and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
- twofold (-e/-a):[6] the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de2 is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
- fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. The notation -in4 is a convenient shorthand.
| Front | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | ||
| High | i | ü | ı | u | |
| Low | e | ö | a | o | |
The following examples, based on the copula -dir4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiyedir ("it is Turkey"), kapıdır ("it is the door"), but gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat"). Compound words are considered separate words with regards to vowel harmony: vowels do not have to harmonize between the constituent words of the compound (thus forms like bu+gün ("today") or baş+kent ("capital") are permissible). In addition, vowel harmony does not apply for loanwords and some invariant suffixes, such as -ki** ("belonging to ... ") and -ken ("while ...-ing"); there are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother").
**Exceptionally, bugün ("today") + -ki becomes günkü ("today's"); likewise for dün ("yesterday").
[edit] Stress
Main stress occurs regularly on the last syllable of a word.[1] Exceptions include forms with some suffixes which have inherent stress, and a set of words with the Sezer stress pattern consisting primarily of loanwords (particularly from Italian and Greek) such as masa /ˈmasa/ "desk", lokanta /loˈkanta/ "restaurant", and iskele /isˈkele/ "pier". The lexical exceptions in Turkish stress have been important to linguistic theories of how phonological exceptions should be represented grammatically.
[edit] Regular final stress
As stated above, word-final stress is the regular pattern in Turkish:
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σ'σ elˈma elma "apple"
The metrical weight of a syllable in terms of moras has no effect on the placement of stress in the regular pattern. Light (L) syllables in Turkish are open syllables (CV) which consist of a single mora while heavy (H) syllables have syllable codas (CVC) which consist of two moras.
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LL'L a.raˈba araba "car" H'L tekˈme tekme "kick" (noun) L'H "" H'H ""
The regular pattern persists in derived words as well. (See: stress and suffixation section.)
[edit] Sezer stress
Proper names (of both places and foreign people) follow a different stress pattern, known in the linguistics literature as Sezer stress (after the discoverer of the pattern, Engin Sezer). In this lexical domain, stress occurs on penultimate syllables unless the penultimate syllable is light and the antepenultimate syllable is a heavy. The weight of the final syllable is irrelevant.
Penultimate:
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L'LL aˈda.na Adana L'LH oˈre.ɡon Oregon L'HL eˈdir.ne Edirne L'HH vaˈʃink.ton Vaşington H'HL anˈtal.ja Antalya H'HH isˈtan.bul İstanbul
Antepenultimate in …HLσ words:
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'HLL ˈan.ka.ra Ankara 'HLH ˈmer.dʒi.mek mercimek
The Sezer stressed form /aˈda.na/ would be expected to have the unattested form */a.daˈna/ under the regular stress pattern. Thus, it can be seen that the regular and the Sezer pattern are contrastive.
The Sezer stress pattern is productive in spite of it being observed on a smaller subset of lexical items. Suffixed words that have the regular pattern can shift to the lexical class of placenames (via zero-derivation). When these words are used as placenames, the regular stress pattern shifts to the Sezer pattern. For instance, the word /tor.baˈlɯ/ torbalı "with bag" has regular stress in its normal use, but when a placename it has Sezer stress /ˈtor.ba.lɯ/.
A further note about Sezer stress is that the pattern is completely regular. This is true of loanwords whose correspondent in the source language has a different stress pattern. Thus, it is not the case that rhythms from the source language are being transferred into Turkish. For example, the English word Arkansas has antepenultimate stress (i.e. /ˈɑr.kən.sɔː/), but the loanword in Turkish has penultimate stress as predicted by the Sezer rhythm.
One approach to the metrical analysis of the Sezer pattern posits a general disyllabic iambic rhythm that is aligned with the right word edge with a restriction against having a nonfinal foot (or alternately requiring an extrametrical final syllable) and a requirement that heavy syllables carry stress (weight-to-stress). Thus:
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(L'L)σ (aˈda)na, (oˈre)ɡon nonfinal right-aligned even iamb (L'H)σ (eˈdir)ne, (vaˈʃink)ton nonfinal right-aligned uneven iamb (H'H)σ (anˈtal)ja, (isˈtan)bul nonfinal right-aligned heavy iamb
The words with antepenultimate stress have a rhythmic reversal to a trochee to prevent a heavy antepenultimate syllable from not being stressed, that is an illicit *(H'L)σ form:
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('HL)σ (ˈan.ka)ra, (ˈmer.dʒi)mek nonfinal right-aligned uneven trochee
[edit] Stress and suffixation
The regular stress pattern occurs on words with a stem combined with suffixes. Here the stress is consistently word-final and appears to shift rightward away from the stem as suffixes are concatenated.
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σ'σ]stem elˈma elma "apple" σσ]stem-'σ el.maˈlar elmalar "apple" (plural) σσ]stem-σ-'σ el.ma.larˈdan elmalardan "apple" (plural, ablative)
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σσ'σ]stem pat.lɯˈdʒan patlıcan "eggplant" σσσ]stem-'σ pat.lɯ.dʒaˈnɯm patlıcanım "eggplant" (1st sing. poss.) σσσ]stem-σ-'σ pat.lɯ.dʒa.nɯˈma patlıcanıma "eggplant" (1st sing. poss. dative)
The above is not the case in stems with Sezer stress. Stems with Sezer stress retain the main stress of the underived form:
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'HLL]stem ˈman.dɯ.ra mandıra "farm" 'HLL]stem-σ ˈman.dɯ.ra.da mandırada "farm" (locative) 'HLL]stem-σ-σ ˈman.dɯ.ra.lar.da mandıralarda "farm" (plural, locative)
Words ending with a personal predicative suffix are generally stressed on the preceding syllable. This stress pattern can be useful in disambiguating homographic words containing possessive suffixes or the plural suffix:[7]
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ben-im ˈbe.nim "It's me" vs. ben-im beˈnim "my" çocuk-lar tʃoˈdʒuk.lar "They are children" vs. çocuk-lar to.dʒukˈlar "(the) children"
[edit] Stress in compounds
In compounds, the first compound element retains its stress (prior to compounding) while the second element loses its stress.
[edit] Lexical exceptions
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This section requires expansion. |
Diminutives. Word-initial trochee (= initial stress).
-en/-an adverbs. Nonfinal right-aligned trochee weight-to-stress (i.e. stress H penult, else: stress antepenult):
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LL('H)L ik.tiˈsaː.den iktisaden "economically" L('HL)L teˈkef.fy.len tekeffülen "by surety"
[edit] Secondary stress
Secondary stress in Turkish has been reported with conflicting descriptions. Some linguists have denied its existence while others have observed it but with different researchers describing incompatible stress placement systems. One description has secondary stress on closed syllables; another has secondary stress on final syllables in words with nonfinal main stress. Further research is clearly warranted.
[edit] See also
[edit] References and notes
- ^ a b International Phonetic Association (1999). "Turkish". Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 155. ISBN 0-521-65236-7 (hb); ISBN 0-521-63751-1 (pb).
- ^ Lewis (2001):3-4,6.
- ^ The k~ğ alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10.
- ^ The vowel ı is also commonly transcribed as [ɨ] in linguistic literature.
- ^ Lewis (1953):21
- ^ For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21-22. He later preferred to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18).
- ^ Halbout & Güzey (2001), pp. 56–58.
[edit] Bibliography
- Halbout, Dominique; Gönen Güzey (2001). Parlons turc. Paris: L'Harmattan.
- Inkelas, Sharon. (1994). Exceptional stress-attracting suffixes in Turkish: Representations vs. the grammar.
- Inkelas, Sharon; & Orgun, Cemil Orhan. (2003). Turkish stress: A review. Phonology, 20 (1), 139-161.
- Kaisse, Ellen. (1985). Some theoretical consequences of stress rules in Turkish. In W. Eilfort, P. Kroeber et al. (Eds.), Papers from the general session of the Twenty-first regional meeting (pp. 199-209). Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.
- Lees, Robert. (1961). The phonology of Modern Standard Turkish. Indiana University publications: Uralic and Altaic series (Vol. 6). Indiana University Publications.
- Lewis, Geoffrey. (1967). Turkish grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Lightner, Theodore. (1978). The main stress rule in Turkish. In M. A. Jazayery, E. Polomé et al. (Eds.), Linguistic and literary studies in honor of Archibald Hill (Vol. 2, pp. 267-270). The Hague: Mouton.
- Sezer, Engin. (1981). On non-final stress in Turkish. Journal of Turkish Studies, 5, 61-69.
- Swift, Lloyd B. (1963). A reference grammar of Modern Turkish. Indiana University publications: Uralic and Altaic series (Vol. 19). Bloomington: Indiana University Publications.
- Underhill, Robert. (1976). Turkish grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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