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Morphological Complexity within and across Boundaries: In honour of Aslı Göksel
Edited by Aslı Gürer, Dilek Uygun-Gökmen and Balkız Öztürk
[Studies in Language Companion Series 215] 2020
► pp. 211–234

The great divide

Parts of speech and their consequences for the phonological shape of Turkish words

| University of Vienna

Various restrictions about the phonological structure of Turkish roots/bases apply differently to verbs than to other categories. This article looks at several such phenomena and finds that phonological privilege, i.e. more variety in patterns, does not apply uniformly to either verbs or the complement set, in that verbs sometimes show greater freedom, sometimes less. The division line always remains the same, however. Various hypotheses about the origin and the role of that dividing line are discussed, though ultimately the question remains open.

Keywords: lexicon, verbs, Turkish phonology, category-specific phonology, phonological privilege
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Where word class matters for phonological shape
    • 2.1The k-zero alternation
    • 2.2Non-final stress
    • 2.3Vowel harmony
    • 2.4Distribution of stops
    • 2.5Vowel reduction & suspension of U-harmony
      • 2.5.1Vowel reduction
      • 2.5.2Palatal consonants, U-harmony and the great divide
  • 3.Evaluating the asymmetry between different parts of speech
    • 3.1Phonological privilege
    • 3.2And the winner is…?
  • 4.Reasons for the great divide
    • 4.1Base identity
    • 4.2Lexical addresses
    • 4.3Organisation of the lexicon
    • 4.4Are verbs really an open class?
  • 5.Summary
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.215.08poc
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