| /i/ |
[
{{Selfref|For assistance with IPA transcriptions of Turkish for Wikipedia articles, see WP:IPA for Turkish.}}
{{Turkish language}}
The phonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
of the Turkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
describes the set of sounds and their relationships with one another in spoken Turkish. One characteristic feature of Turkish is a system of vowel harmonyVowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
that distinguishes between frontA front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
and back vowelA back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
s. 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.
Consonants
Consonant phonemes of Standard Turkish
|
Labial Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...
|
Dental |
AlveolarAlveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
|
Post-alveolar |
PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
|
VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
|
GlottalGlottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
|
| Nasal A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
|
m |
|
n |
|
|
|
|
| Stop In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
|
p |
b |
t̪ |
d̪ |
|
|
c |
ɟ |
k |
ɡ |
|
| Affricate Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
|
|
|
|
t͡ʃ |
d͡ʒ |
|
|
|
| Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
|
f |
|
|
s |
z |
ʃ |
ʒ |
|
|
h |
| Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
|
ʋ |
|
ɫ |
l |
j |
|
|
| Rhotic In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
|
|
|
ɾ |
|
|
|
|
In native Turkic words, the velar consonants /k, ɡ/ are palatalizedIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
to [c, ɟ] (similar to RussianRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
) when adjacent to the front vowels /e, i, œ, y/. Similarly, the consonant /l/ is realized as a clear or light [l] next to front vowels (including word finally), and as a velarized [ɫ] (dark l-See also:* Lateral consonant* Velarization* l-vocalization* Ł...
) next to the central and back vowels /a, ɯ, o, u/. These alternations are not indicated orthographically: the same letters ⟨k⟩, ⟨g⟩, and ⟨l⟩ are used for both pronunciations. In foreign borrowings and proper nouns, however, these distinct realizations of /k, ɡ, l/ are contrastiveContrastive distribution in linguistics, as opposed to complementary distribution or free variation, is the relationship between two different elements, where both elements are found in the same environment with a change in meaning.-Phonology:...
. In particular, [c, ɟ] and clear l are sometimes found in conjunction with the vowels [a] and [u]. This pronunciation can be indicated by adding a circumflex accentThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
over the vowel: e.g. gâvur "infidel", mahkûm "condemned", lâzım "necessary".
/ɾ/ is realized as a modal flap [ɾ] intervocalically. At the margins of words, the passage at the alveolar ridge is closed so that it becomes fricated; in addition, it undergoes final devoicing. Thus it is [ɾ̝] word-initially and [ɾ̝̊] word-finally.
/ʋ/ is only pronounced [v] after voiceless consonants, as in cetvel. It is silent before labial consonants, as in sövmek. Elsewhere it is [ʋ].
Voiceless stops are aspiratedIn phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
in initial and medial position. Words and morphemes ending in /b, d, d͡ʒ, ɡ, ɟ/ are devoiced to [p, t, t͡ʃ, k, c] word-finally and before a consonant: /edmeɟ/ ('to do, to make') is pronounced [etmec]. (This is reflected in the orthography, so that it is spelled ⟨etmek⟩). When a vowel is added to nouns ending with postvocalic /ɡ/, it is lenitedIn linguistics, lenition is a kind of sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening" . Lenition can happen both synchronically and diachronically...
to ⟨ğ⟩ (see below); this is also reflected in the orthography.
In addition, there is a debatable phoneme, called yumuşak g ('soft g') and written ⟨ğG is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
⟩, which only occurs after a vowel. It is sometimes transcribed /ɰ/. Between back vowels, it may be silent or sound like a bilabial glide. Between front vowels, it is either silent or has a [j] sound, depending on the preceding & following vowels. When not between vowels (that is, word finally and before a consonant), it is generally realized as vowel lengthIn linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
, lengthening the preceding vowel, or as a slight [j] if preceded by a front vowel. Historically, and perhaps still for some people or in careful pronunciation, it was a velar approximant [ɰ]. Before the loss of this sound, Turkish did not allow vowel sequences in native words, and today the letter ⟨ğ⟩ serves largely to indicate vowel length and vowel sequences where /ɰ/ once occurred.
Vowels
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨ıThe Turkish alphabet, which is a variant of the Latin alphabet, includes two distinct versions of the letter I, one dotted and the other dotless. The difference between the two versions is modelled after the letters Ö and Ü, which were taken from German. These two letters represent front-vowel...
⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨ü⟩. There are no diphthongs in Turkish and when two vowels come together, which occurs in some Arabic loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s, each vowel retains its individual sound.
Turkish vowels with example words
| Vowel sound |
Example |
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
|
Description |
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
|
Orthography The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
|
English translation |
| /i/ |
[
{{Selfref|For assistance with IPA transcriptions of Turkish for Wikipedia articles, see WP:IPA for Turkish.}}
{{Turkish language}}
The phonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
of the Turkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
describes the set of sounds and their relationships with one another in spoken Turkish. One characteristic feature of Turkish is a system of vowel harmonyVowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
that distinguishes between frontA front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
and back vowelA back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
s. 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.
Consonants
Consonant phonemes of Standard Turkish
|
Labial Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...
|
Dental |
AlveolarAlveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
|
Post-alveolar |
PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
|
VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
|
GlottalGlottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
|
| Nasal A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
|
m |
|
n |
|
|
|
|
| Stop In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
|
p |
b |
t̪ |
d̪ |
|
|
c |
ɟ |
k |
ɡ |
|
| Affricate Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
|
|
|
|
t͡ʃ |
d͡ʒ |
|
|
|
| Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
|
f |
|
|
s |
z |
ʃ |
ʒ |
|
|
h |
| Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
|
ʋ |
|
ɫ |
l |
j |
|
|
| Rhotic In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
|
|
|
ɾ |
|
|
|
|
In native Turkic words, the velar consonants /k, ɡ/ are palatalizedIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
to [c, ɟ] (similar to RussianRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
) when adjacent to the front vowels /e, i, œ, y/. Similarly, the consonant /l/ is realized as a clear or light [l] next to front vowels (including word finally), and as a velarized [ɫ] (dark l-See also:* Lateral consonant* Velarization* l-vocalization* Ł...
) next to the central and back vowels /a, ɯ, o, u/. These alternations are not indicated orthographically: the same letters ⟨k⟩, ⟨g⟩, and ⟨l⟩ are used for both pronunciations. In foreign borrowings and proper nouns, however, these distinct realizations of /k, ɡ, l/ are contrastiveContrastive distribution in linguistics, as opposed to complementary distribution or free variation, is the relationship between two different elements, where both elements are found in the same environment with a change in meaning.-Phonology:...
. In particular, [c, ɟ] and clear l are sometimes found in conjunction with the vowels [a] and [u]. This pronunciation can be indicated by adding a circumflex accentThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
over the vowel: e.g. gâvur "infidel", mahkûm "condemned", lâzım "necessary".
/ɾ/ is realized as a modal flap [ɾ] intervocalically. At the margins of words, the passage at the alveolar ridge is closed so that it becomes fricated; in addition, it undergoes final devoicing. Thus it is [ɾ̝] word-initially and [ɾ̝̊] word-finally.
/ʋ/ is only pronounced [v] after voiceless consonants, as in cetvel. It is silent before labial consonants, as in sövmek. Elsewhere it is [ʋ].
Voiceless stops are aspiratedIn phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
in initial and medial position. Words and morphemes ending in /b, d, d͡ʒ, ɡ, ɟ/ are devoiced to [p, t, t͡ʃ, k, c] word-finally and before a consonant: /edmeɟ/ ('to do, to make') is pronounced [etmec]. (This is reflected in the orthography, so that it is spelled ⟨etmek⟩). When a vowel is added to nouns ending with postvocalic /ɡ/, it is lenitedIn linguistics, lenition is a kind of sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening" . Lenition can happen both synchronically and diachronically...
to ⟨ğ⟩ (see below); this is also reflected in the orthography.
In addition, there is a debatable phoneme, called yumuşak g ('soft g') and written ⟨ğG is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
⟩, which only occurs after a vowel. It is sometimes transcribed /ɰ/. Between back vowels, it may be silent or sound like a bilabial glide. Between front vowels, it is either silent or has a [j] sound, depending on the preceding & following vowels. When not between vowels (that is, word finally and before a consonant), it is generally realized as vowel lengthIn linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
, lengthening the preceding vowel, or as a slight [j] if preceded by a front vowel. Historically, and perhaps still for some people or in careful pronunciation, it was a velar approximant [ɰ]. Before the loss of this sound, Turkish did not allow vowel sequences in native words, and today the letter ⟨ğ⟩ serves largely to indicate vowel length and vowel sequences where /ɰ/ once occurred.
Vowels
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨ıThe Turkish alphabet, which is a variant of the Latin alphabet, includes two distinct versions of the letter I, one dotted and the other dotless. The difference between the two versions is modelled after the letters Ö and Ü, which were taken from German. These two letters represent front-vowel...
⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨ü⟩. There are no diphthongs in Turkish and when two vowels come together, which occurs in some Arabic loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s, each vowel retains its individual sound.
Turkish vowels with example words
| Vowel sound |
Example |
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
|
Description |
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
|
Orthography The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
|
English translation |
| /i/ |
[{{IPAlink |
close front unrounded The close front unrounded vowel, or high front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ....
|
/dil/ |
dil |
'tongue' |
| /y/ |
[{{IPAlink |
close front rounded The close front rounded vowel, or high front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is y...
|
/ɟyˈneʃ/ |
güneş |
'sun' |
| /ɯ/ |
ɯ |
close back unrounded The close back unrounded vowel, or high back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . Typographically a turned letter m, given its relation to the sound represented by the letter u it...
|
/ɯˈɫɯk/ |
ılık |
'mild' |
| /e/ |
[{{IPAlink |
front unrounded Mid front unrounded vowel might refer to:*The exact mid front unrounded vowel , between and *The close-mid front unrounded vowel *The open-mid front unrounded vowel...
|
/jel/ |
yel |
'wind' |
| /ø/ |
[{{IPAlink |
mid front rounded The International Phonetic Alphabet distinguishes two mid front rounded vowels:#The close-mid front rounded vowel #The open-mid front rounded vowel...
|
/ɟøɾ/ |
gör- |
'to see' |
| /ä/ |
[{{IPAlink |
open central unrounded The open central unrounded vowel, or low central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in many spoken languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet officially has no dedicated letter for this sound between front and back...
|
/daɫ/ |
dal |
'branch' |
| /o/ |
o̞ |
mid back rounded Mid back rounded vowel might refer to:*The exact mid back rounded vowel , between and *The close-mid back rounded vowel *The open-mid back rounded vowel...
|
/joɫ/ |
yol |
'way' |
| /u/ |
[{{IPAlink |
close back rounded The close back rounded vowel, or high back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is u....
|
/uˈtʃak/ |
uçak |
'airplane' |
(/ø/ may also be transcribed as ⟨œ⟩ (as in the vowel chart at right), but has the same mid height as /e/ and /o/.)
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). The vowel /e/ plays the role as the "front" analog of /a/.
All vowels but /o a/ have lowered allophones word-finally: [ɪ ʏ ɛ œ ʊ]. In addition, for most people /e/ has an allophone [æ] before a syllable-coda /m n l r/, so that perende 'somersault' is pronounced [perændɛ]. There are a limited number of words, such as kendi 'self' and hem 'both', which are pronounced with [e] by some people.
Vowel harmony
Turkish vowels
| |
Front |
|
Back |
| |
Unrounded |
Rounded |
|
Unrounded |
Rounded |
| High |
i |
ü |
|
ı |
u |
| Low |
e |
ö |
|
a |
o |
With some exceptions, a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowelA back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
s (/a ɯ o u/) or exclusively front vowelA front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
s (/e i ø y/), as, for example, in the words karanlıktaydılar ('they were in the dark') and düşünceliliklerinden ('due to their thoughtfulness'). /o ø/ only occur in the initial syllable.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being three-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by three features: front/back, rounded/unroundedIn phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...
, and high/low, resulting in eight possible combinations, each corresponding to one Turkish vowel, as shown in the table.
Vowel harmony of grammatical suffixes is realized through "a chameleon-like quality," meaning that the vowels of suffixes change to harmonize with the vowel of the preceding syllable. According to the changeable vowel, there are two patterns:
- twofold (/e/~/a/): Frontality is preserved, that is, /e/ appears following a front vowel and /a/ appears following a back vowel. For example, the locative suffix is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de2 is shorthand for this pattern.
- fourfold (/i/~/y/~/ɯ/~/u/): Both frontality and rounding are preserved. For example, the genitive suffix is -in after unrounded front vowels, -ün after rounded front vowels, -ın after unrounded back vowels, and -un after rounded back vowels. The notation -in4 can be this pattern's shorthand.
The vowel /ø/ does not occur in grammatical suffixes. In the isolated case of /o/ in the verbal progressiveThe continuous and progressive aspects are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. It is a verb category with two principal meaning components: duration and incompletion...
suffix -i4yor it is immutable, breaking the vowel harmony such as in yürüyor ('[he/she/it] is walking').
Some examples illustrating the use of vowel harmony in Turkish with the copulaThis article supplements the general articles on the copula and Turkish grammar.The English infinitive "to be" is rendered in Turkish as olmak, while "existence" is varlık. The latter word is the abstract noun derived from var, which is an adjective meaning "existing" or "present"...
-dir4 ('[he/she/it] is'):
- Türkiyedir ('it is Turkey')
- gündür ('it is the day')
- kapıdır ('it is the door')
- paltodur ('it is the coat').
Compound words do not undergo vowel harmony in their constituent words as in bugün ('today'; from bu, 'this', and gün, 'day') and başkent ('capital'; from baş, 'prime', and kent, 'city').
Vowel harmony does not usually apply to loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s and some invariant and irregular suffixes, such as -ki ('belonging to ...') and -ken ('while ...-ing'). In the suffix -e2bil ('may' or 'can'), only the first vowel undergoes vowel harmony. There are a few native Turkish words that do not have vowel harmony such as anne ('mother'). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel as in annedir ('she is a mother').
Consonantal effects
In most words, consonants are neutral or transparent and have no effect on vowel harmony. In borrowed vocabulary, however, back vowel harmony can be interrupted by the presence of a "front" (i.e. coronal or labial) consonant, and in rarer cases, front vowel harmony can be reversed by the presence of a "back" consonant.
| noun |
dative
case |
meaning |
type
of l |
|
noun |
dative
case |
meaning |
type
of l |
| hâl |
hâle |
situation |
clear |
|
rol |
role |
role |
clear |
| hal |
hale |
closed
market |
clear |
|
sol |
sole |
G-note
(music) |
clear |
| sal |
sala |
raft |
dark |
|
sol |
sola |
left |
dark |
For example, Arabic and French loanwords containing back vowels may nevertheless end in a clear [l] instead of a velarized [ɫ]. Harmonizing suffixes added to such words contain front vowels. The table on the right gives some examples.
Arabic loanwords ending in ⟨k⟩ usually take front-vowel suffixes if the origin is kāf, but back-vowel suffixes if the origin is qāf: e.g. idrak-i "perception-acc." (< إدراك idrāk) vs. fevk-ı "top-acc." (< فوق fawq). Loanwords ending in ⟨at⟩ derived from Arabic tāʾ marbūṭa take front-vowel suffixes: e.g. saat-e "hour-dat." (< ساعة sāʿat), seyahat-e "trip-dat." (< سياحة siyāḥat). Words ending in ⟨at⟩ derived from the Arabic feminine plural ending -āt or from devoicing of Arabic dāl take the expected back-vowel suffixes: e.g. edebiyat-ı "literature-acc." (< أدبيّات adabiyyāt), maksat/maksadı "purpose/purpose-acc." (< مقصد maqṣad).
Front-vowel suffixes are also used with many Arabic monosyllables containing ⟨a⟩ followed by two consonants, the second of which is a front consonant: e.g. harfi "letter-acc.", harp/harbi "war/war-acc.". Some combinations of consonants give rise to vowel insertion, and in these cases the epentheticIn phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
vowel is also a front vowel: e.g. vakit/vakti "time/time-acc." (< وقت waqt), kavil/kavli "agreement/agreement-acc." (< قول qawl).
There is a tendency to eliminate these exceptional consonantal effects and to apply vowel harmony more regularly, especially for frequent words and those whose foreign origin is not apparent. For example, the words rahat "comfort" and sanat "art" take back-vowel suffixes, even though they derive from Arabic tāʾ marbūṭa.
{{Clear}}
Stress
Main stressIn linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
occurs regularly on the last syllableA syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
of a word, except for forms including suffixIn linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es with inherent stress, adverbs, proper names, and some loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s (particularly from ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
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.{{Citation needed|date=July 2010}}
Regular final stress
As stated above, word-final stress is the regular pattern in Turkish:
| σ'σ |
/elˈma/ |
elma ('apple') |
The metrical weight of a syllable in terms of moraMora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
s has no effect on the placement of stress in the regular pattern. Light (L) syllables in Turkish are open syllables (V or CV) which consist of a single mora while heavy (H) syllables have consonantal codas (VC or CVC) and consist of two moras.
| LL'L |
/a.ɾaˈba/ |
araba ('car') |
| H'L |
/tekˈme/ |
tekme ('kick' [noun]) |
| H'L |
/orˈdu/ |
ordu ('army' [noun]) |
| L'H |
/kaˈdɯn/ |
kadın ('woman') |
| H'H |
/oɾˈtak/ |
ortak ('partner') |
The regular pattern persists in derivedIn linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
words as well. (See: stress and suffixation section.)
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 the antepenult if the penult is light and the antepenult is heavy, and otherwise on the penult. The weight of the final syllable is irrelevant.
Penultimate stress:
| L'LL |
/aˈda.na/ |
Adana |
| L'LH |
/oˈɾe.ɡon/ |
Oregon |
| L'HL |
/eˈdiɾ.ne/ |
Edirne |
| L'HH |
/vaˈʃink.ton/ |
Vaşington |
| H'HL |
/anˈtal.ja/ |
Antalya |
| H'HH |
/isˈtan.bul/ |
İstanbul |
| 'HL |
/ˈordu/ |
Ordu (city) |
Antepenultimate in …HLσ words:
| 'HLL |
/ˈan.ka.ɾa/ |
Ankara |
| 'HLH |
/ˈmeɾ.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 set 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 /toɾ.baˈlɯ/ torbalı ('with bag') has regular stress in its normal use, but when a placename it has Sezer stress /ˈtoɾ.ba.lɯ/.
The Sezer stress pattern is completely regular, including for loanwords whose source language version has a different stress pattern. That is, source stress is not preserved in Turkish. For example, the English word Arkansas has antepenultimate stress (i.e. /ˈɑr.kən.sɔː/), but the loanword in Turkish has penultimate stress.
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:
| (L'L)σ |
/(aˈda)na/, /(oˈɾe)ɡon/ |
nonfinal right-aligned even iamb |
| (L'H)σ |
/(eˈdiɾ)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 trocheeA trochee or choree, choreus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one...
to prevent a heavy antepenultimate syllable from not being stressed, that is an illicit *(H'L)σ form:
| ('HL)σ |
/(ˈan.ka)ɾa/, /(ˈmeɾ.dʒi)mek/ |
nonfinal right-aligned uneven trochee |
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.
| σ'σ]stem |
/elˈma/ |
elma ('apple') |
| σσ]stem-'σ |
/el.maˈlaɾ/ |
elmalar ('apples') |
| σσ]stem-σ-'σ |
/el.ma.laɾˈdan/ |
elmalardan ('apples' abl. In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ...
) |
| 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. dat. The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
) |
The above is not the case in stems with Sezer stress. Stems with Sezer stress retain the main stress of the underived form:
| 'HLL]stem |
/ˈan.ka.ɾa/ |
Ankara 'AnkaraAnkara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
' |
| 'HLL]stem-σ |
/ˈan.ka.ɾa.da/ |
Ankara'da ('in Ankara' loc. Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
) |
| 'HLL]stem-σ-σ |
/ˈan.ka.ɾa.daj.dɯ/ |
Ankara'daydı ('[he/she/it] was in Ankara' definite past, loc.) |
(Turkish orthography requires an apostrophe between proper nouns and attached suffixes.)
Adverbs do not generally take final stress:
nére? nérede? ('where?')
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:
| ben-im |
/ˈbe.nim/ |
'It's me' |
vs. |
ben-im |
/beˈnim/ |
'my' |
| çocuk-lar |
/tʃoˈdʒuk.laɾ/ |
'They are children' |
vs. |
çocuk-lar |
/tʃo.dʒukˈlaɾ/ |
'(the) children' |
Other suffixes which do not take stress are the interrogative and negative suffixes mi and ma, and the adverbial and adjectival suffixes le and ce:
- Geldi mi?
- Yápma!
- bu surétle ('in this way')
- Tǘrkçe ('Turkish')
- yálnız ('only'; cf. yalníz, 'alone')
On the other hand, the verbal tense/aspect/mood morpheme is usually stressed:
- geliyórum
- gidérsin
Stress in compounds
In compounds, the first compound element retains its stress (prior to compounding) while the second element loses its stress.
Lexical exceptions
{{Expand section|date=March 2009}}
Diminutives. Word-initial trochee (= initial stress).
-en/-an adverbs. Nonfinal right-aligned trochee weight-to-stress (i.e. stress H penult, else: stress antepenult):
| LL('H)L |
/ik.tiˈsaː.den/ |
iktisaden ('economically') |
| L('HL)L |
/teˈkef.fy.len/ |
tekeffülen ('by surety') |
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.
| |