Table Of ContentT U R C O L O G I C A 123
Eyüp Bacanlı
Irregularities in
Turkic languages
Harrassowitz Verlag
TURCOLOGICA
Herausgegeben von Lars Johanson
Band 123
2020
Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden
Eyüp Bacanlı
Irregularities in
Turkic languages
2020
Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden
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Contents
Preface ............................................................................................................ 9
Story of this book............................................................................................... 9
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................ 11
Notes on transcription and symbols .................................................................... 13
Transcription ................................................................................................. 13
Abbreviations of grammatical terms ................................................................... 19
Other abbreviations ....................................................................................... 19
Chapter 1. Introduction ............................................................................... 21
1. Some notes on the classification of Turkic languages ...................................... 22
2. Some preliminary notes on the morphophonology of Turkic languages ........... 23
3. Method .......................................................................................................... 25
4. Canonical approach ........................................................................................ 26
5. The distinction between inflection and derivation ........................................... 27
6. What is not irregular? ..................................................................................... 30
7. Morpheme, morph and allomorph ................................................................... 33
8. Allomorphy and its conditions ........................................................................ 33
8.1. Phonologically conditioned allomorphy .................................................. 35
8.2. Morphologically conditioned allomorphy ................................................ 36
8.3. Lexically conditioned allomorphy ........................................................... 38
8.4. Semantically conditioned allomorphy ...................................................... 39
8.5. Fusion and allomorphy............................................................................ 40
9. What kind of irregularities are beyond this work? ........................................... 42
10. Pronouns ...................................................................................................... 42
Chapter 2. Lexically Conditioned Allomorphy...................................... 47
1. Suppletion ...................................................................................................... 47
1.1. Introduction ............................................................................................ 47
1.2. Number suppletion.................................................................................. 50
1.3. Possessive suppletion .............................................................................. 59
1.4. Case suppletion....................................................................................... 70
1.5. Suppletion in diminutives........................................................................ 80
1.6. Adjectival suppletion .............................................................................. 81
1.7. Verbal suppletion .................................................................................... 95
1.8. Suppletion and fusion ............................................................................. 130
1.9. Zero alternation of the verb BOL- in the expression of necessity .............. 132
1.10. Discussion on suppletion in Turkic languages ........................................ 133
2. Augments in stems ......................................................................................... 135
2.1. Augments in pronouns ............................................................................ 135
2.2. Augments in nouns ................................................................................. 137
2.3. Augments in verbs .................................................................................. 143
6 Irregularities in Turkic Languages
2.4. Conclusions on stem augments in Turkic languages ................................. 144
3. Sound drops from stems ................................................................................. 145
3.1. Sound drops from pronominal stems ....................................................... 145
3.2. Sound drops from nominal stems ............................................................ 147
3.3. Sound drops from adjectival stems .......................................................... 148
3.4. Sound drops from verbal stems ............................................................... 149
3.5. Conclusions on sound drops from stems .................................................. 154
4. Restricted suffixes .......................................................................................... 155
4.1. Restricted plural suffixes in pronouns ...................................................... 155
4.2. Restricted plural suffixes in nouns ........................................................... 156
4.3. Restricted possessive suffix in Chuvash .................................................. 161
4.4. Restricted case suffixes in Turkic languages ............................................ 163
4.5. Restricted verbal suffixes and periphrastic forms ..................................... 177
4.6. Conclusions on restricted suffixes ........................................................... 180
5. Deviations from the generalized phonological rules ........................................ 182
5.1. Stems behaving contrary to a certain phonological rule ............................ 182
5.2. Non-Phonological uses of phonological allomorphs ................................. 186
5.3. Conclusions on phonological deviations .................................................. 201
6. Irregularities in agreement .............................................................................. 201
6.1. Agreement related with case forms of pronouns ...................................... 201
6.2. Agreement related with possession .......................................................... 210
6.3. Conclusions on irregularities in agreement .............................................. 210
7. Defective paradigms....................................................................................... 210
8. Pluralia tantum ............................................................................................... 212
Chapter 3: Morphologically Conditioned Allomorphy ....................... .215
1. Introduction ................................................................................................... 215
2. Morphological stem allomorphy ..................................................................... 215
3. Morphological affixal allomorphy .................................................................. 217
3.1. Nominal suffixes .................................................................................... 218
3.2. Verbal suffixes ....................................................................................... 239
Chapter 4: Syntactic Alternations ............................................................ .271
1. Introduction ................................................................................................... 271
2. The substitution of the existential words with the verb bol- ‘to be(come)’........ 271
3. Alternations for the notion ‘half’ in Turkic languages ..................................... 275
4. Allomorphs of numerals ................................................................................. 276
5. Alternations in compounds and associative plural in Lena group ..................... 277
Chapter 5: Extraordinary Lexicalizations . ............................................. .281
1. Introduction ................................................................................................... 281
2. Derivation of decade units .............................................................................. 281
3. A different formation of cardinals between ‘10’ and ‘30’ ................................ 284
4. Counting systems other than decimal .............................................................. 286
5. ‘Ten thousand’ ............................................................................................... 286
6. Foreign even numbers in Karachay-Balkar ..................................................... 287
Contents 7
7. Lexicalized fractional numbers ....................................................................... 288
8. Lexicalized negative senses ............................................................................ 288
9. Lexicalized imperatives .................................................................................. 290
10. Formation of extraordinary time vocabulary ................................................. 290
11. Lexical comparative adjectives ..................................................................... 292
12. Pro-verbs ..................................................................................................... 294
Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 296
Chapter 6: Discussion and Conclusions ................................................. .299
1. Introduction ................................................................................................... 299
2. Comparing Turkic cases with World languages ............................................... 299
3. Comparison across Turkic languages .............................................................. 302
4. Towards an agglutinating hierarchy for Turkic languages................................ 306
5. Diachronic reasons of irregularities in Turkic.................................................. 307
Bibliography ................................................................................................. . 311
Index of authors ................................ ............................................................333
PREFACE
STORY OF THIS BOOK
My interest in irregularities started during my PhD education on evidentials, when I
came across with the fact that the negative form of the evidential suffix -mIš in Old
Turkic was -mAdUk (-mA being negative suffix, and -dUk being an evidential suffix).
I came to know many other asymmetric allomorphy relations in the search of Turkic
languages and decided to investigate the suppletive relations. The first paper titled
“Inflectional suppletion in Turkic languages” appeared in 2011. Going through the
linguistic and turkological literature, I realized that the irregularities are not limited
with suppletive phenomena. My project proposal on “Irregularities in Turkic
Languages” was admitted by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of
Turkey in 2014 (Grant ID is ARDEB-SOBAG 113K488). The project team would
investigate irregularities in 37 older and historical Turkic languages using a wide-
range (more than 400) of turkological and linguistic literature. My supervisors Marcel
Erdal and Ljuba Veselinova oriented and informed me about the methods and
approaches to be implemented. Dr. Veselinova’s 12 talks on morphology which I
attended were illimunating and stimulating. At the end of the project my monograph
on the topic was published in Turkish in August 2016 (Türk Dillerinde Düzensizlikler,
Ankara: Etkileşim Yayınları). The previous edition of this book in Turkish consisted
of 37 chapters where in each chapter a Turkic language was examined. After my
immigration to Canada and being granted a joint fellowship by IIE-Scholar Rescue
Fund and The University of Calgary in 2018, I returned to the topic again, to rewrite
the book in English with huge changes in the structure. Unlike previous edition, the
chapters in this revised edition are based on certain irregularity types in order to
prevent the repeats. The decision in restructuring the book, of course, brought a certain
amount of extra investigation on each topic. This work provides a picture
understanding the irregularities in Turkic languages and the limits of grammar. I
adopted utterly synchronic point of view while examining the irregularities, first by
defining what is regular in a certain language. However, I have also tried to find out
the diachronic reasons for a particular irregularity. I have examined (both full and
partial) suppletion, augments in stems, drops from stems, restricted suffixes,
deviations from acting phonological rules in case of stems and suffixes, defective
paradigms, other syntactic and contextual irregularities, extra-ordinary lexicalization
which are sometimes confused with suppletion, verbal suffixes lacking a negative or
affirmative counterparts, and finally morphological allomorphy (or selection) as a
case of asymmetry. Examination of allomorphy in any language is challenging, and
there are controversial approaches in the theory. Thus, I appreciate readers in advance
for their remarks and contributions.
