MORPOLOGY:THE WORDLAND

There are three types of affixation realized with different types of affixes: • suffixation with suffixes placed after the stem • prefixation with prefixes placed before the stem • infixation with infixes placed within the stem

The plural marker -lAr in öğrenciler is an inflectional morpheme in Turkish. Öğrenci is still an öğrenci, and it still is a noun. It is not a new word that can be listed in the lexicon. -DA in sınıfta has a similar function. It does not change the meaning of the stem, but it establishes a spatial relationship between the relevant elements in a sentence. Number, gender, case markers on nouns as well as tense, aspect, mood, voice, negation, and agreement markers on verbs are all categorized as inflectional morphemes. Except for gender, Turkish employs all of these inflectional categories.

Turkish morphology predominantly allows suffixation as in sev-gi, sev-gi-li, sev- gi- li-ler, etc. Prefixes and infixes can widely be seen in the expansion of foreign words such as, anti-propoganda from propoganda, gayri-resmi from resmi; hakim from hüküm, tacir from tüccar, etc.

They are all bound morphemes. This classification of bound morphemes or affixes is made based on where they appear in word.

There are two major classes of morphemes: free morphemes and bound morphemes.

Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes which change either the meaning or the syntactic class of the stem word or both.

/-(y)Im/ is the first person agreement marker in Turkish. It marks the subject of the sentence on predicative nouns and adjectives. It has four allomorphs conditioned by the rounding harmony. The buffer -y is *ed when the stem ends in a vowel. • [ım] uzman-ım [um] doktor-um • [y-ım] şarkıcı-y-ım [y-um] futbolcu-y-um • [im] öğretmen-im [üm] özgür-üm • [y-im] çiftçi-y-im [y-üm] sözcü-y-üm

Words that are not affixed are called roots. Many words in a language, such as nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, contain a root standing. An overwhelming number of roots in Turkish are monosyllabic although more than one syllable in a root is permissible.

In the word evler, there are two morphemes: ev and –ler. There are also two syllables: ev and –ler.

Morphemes that can stand by themselves are known as free morphemes. Some examples are ev, gel, iyi, ve, bir, ben, için, etc.

A morpheme’s actual surface phonetic realization is specified based on the phonological environment in which that morpheme occurs.

In the word evlerin, there are three morphemes: ev, -ler, (i)n. Even though –in is a morpheme in this word it does not form a syllable.

-sIz in zevksiz and -(y)IcI in satıcı are derivational morphemes for two reasons: • They change the syntactic class of the stem. –sIz makes adjectives from nouns as in zevk (noun)à zevk-siz (adjective), and -(y)IcI makes nouns from verbs as in sat (verb) à sat-ıcı (noun). • They change the meaning of the stem: ev means ‘house’, but zevksiz ‘tasteless.’ Likewise, satmeans ‘to sell’, but satıcı ‘one who sells’

There are two types of stems: • simple stems which consist of a single morpheme that has a root standing: yaş in yaşlı • complex stems which consist of a free morpheme followed by another bound morpheme: yaş-lı-lar. In this example yaş-lı is the complex stem to which the plural suffix is attached.

Words are made up of morphemes.

If a free morpheme has a lexical meaning, it is classified as a content morpheme. Nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs are content morphemes. Some free morphemes, such as postpositions, conjunctions,determiners, pronouns, etc., mark grammatical relationships. They are therefore called functional morphemes.

The attachment process of a bound morpheme to another morpheme is called affixation and the attached bound morphemes are called affixes.

Morphology is a sub-field of linguistics which focuses on word structure and describes the rules governing derivation, inflection, and word formation.

Based on what they do in a word, bound morphemes are further classified into derivational and inflectional morphemes.

-Dikçe is a single morpheme in geldikçe, but it has two syllables: dik and çe.

Morphemes that never stand alone forms are classified as bound morphemes. Some examples are –ler in evler, -di in geldi, -cı in avcı, etc.

Morphemes: • are the smallest units that construct words in a language. • are indivisible units in that cannot be broken into smaller units. • typically have either a meaning or a grammatical function. • may be compatible with syllables. A single morpheme may serve also as a syllable. • may not be compatible with sylables. A single morpheme may be composed of more than one syllable or a single syllable may include more than one morpheme or a morpheme may not even have a syllable standing.

A complex word is a word which is formed with a number of affixes attached to a free morpheme. Çalışkanlık, dürüstlük, geldiler, hızlıca, yaşlı are all complex words.

In a complex word, the smallest indivisible free morpheme is the stem of that complex word. For example, yaş in the word yaşlı is the stem of this word.

Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that mark grammatical relations. They do not change the meaning, nor do they change the syntactic category of the stem.

One important feature of the word structure in Turkish is that stems remain invariant when expanded by derivation or inflection. It is always the suffixes that undergo a phonological chage. There are few exceptions to this generalization, though: ben vs bana, sen vs sana.

Turkish is an agglutinative language which has a vast array of morphemes with different functions and clear-cut boundaries when combined with each other. Rich combinations of new meanings are possible by expanding stems as in (a) kalınlaştırılmamışlardanmışmış. However, caution must be taken that there are some restrictions on the way these morphemes are put together. If they are not used in the right order, either ungrammatical forms such as (b) *kalıntırlaş, or forms with different meanings such as (c) kalınlaştırılmamıştanmışmışlar may be produced. This is because the order of morphemes in a sentence is fixed and each mmorpheme is used in the position specified for it.

–lAr is the abstract symbol representing the grammatical category PLURAL in Turkish. Therefore, it is a morpheme. This morpheme is realized in two different ways in actual speech: –lar or -ler. Even though these are two different phonetic representations, they represent the same morpheme and serve the same grammatical function of indicating plurality. Therefore, they are characterized as the variations or the allomorphs of the same morpheme.

/-mIş/ is the morpheme marking reported past in Turkish. It applies to verbs and it has four allomorphs. Conditioned by the rounding harmony, the high suffix vowel /ı/ in -mIş agrees with the stem vowel in backness and rounding. This yields four variations: • [mış] al-mış, sız-mış • [miş] sil-miş, sez-miş • [muş] uyu-muş, soy-muş • [müş] gör-müş, gül-müş

There are four types of stems formed through derivation (p: 66, Table 5.6.): • Denominal nominal: nouns made from nouns • Deverbal nominal: nouns made from verbs • Denominal verbal: verbs made from nouns • Deverbal verbal: verbs made from verbs.

The general tendency is the following: • derivation precedes inflection: av-cı-lar • number precedes case: ev-ler-de • voice precedes tense: yıka-n-dı • negation follows voice, but precedes tense: yıka-n-ma-dı • tense precedes person & number agreement: yıka-n-ma-dı-k

The choice between /e/ and /a/ in the plural morpheme is determined by the preceding stem vowel as shown below: a. [ler] after front vowels as in: ev-ler, iş-ler, kütük-ler, söz-ler b. [lar] after non-front vowels as in okul-lar, sınıf-lar, kutu-lar, toz-lar

A morpheme is an instance of abstraction in morphology and the variations of a morpheme are characterized as the allomorphs of that morpheme.

/-DI/ is the morpheme marking definite past in Turkish. It applies to verbs, and it has eight allomorphs determined by the preceding stem vowel and consonant. The high suffix vowel and the stem are supposed to share the specification for both backness and rounding. In addition, stem consonants and suffix consonants should share the same voicing feature: /d/ is *ed after the voiced consonats and /t/ after the voiceless. • [dı] kal-dı, kız-dı [tı] sars-tı, kırıt-tı • [di] gel-di, giy-di [ti] kes-ti, it-ti • [du] uyu-du, soy-du [tu] tut-tu, kop-tu • [dü] öv-dü, yürü-dü [tü] öt-tü, ürk-tü

Allomorphs are predictable in that they are in complementary distribution. This means that the position where one allomorph occurs disallows the occurance of the other counterpart. They cannot appear in the same phonological environment. They mutually exclude each other when certain conditions occur. Compare *evlar, *işlar, *kütüklar, *sözlar where -lar is disallowed; and *okuller, *sınıfler, *kutuler, *otoler where -ler is disallowed.

/-CI/ is the agentive morpheme in Turkish. It applies to nouns to form other nouns which mean ‘one who makes or sells NOUN’. It has eight allomorphs. Consonant harmony in voicing, and rounding harmony in both backness and rounding derive eight variations. • [cı] kolonya-cı [çı] bıçak-çı • [ci] kilim-ci [çi] saat-çi • [cu] baston-cu [çu] koltuk-çu • [cü] örgü-cü [çü] küp-çü