Cover not available
Part of
Exploring the Turkish Linguistic Landscape: Essays in honor of Eser Erguvanlı-Taylan
Edited by Mine Güven, Didar Akar, Balkız Öztürk and Meltem Kelepir
[Studies in Language Companion Series 175] 2016
► pp. 21–40

Is there phonological vowel reduction in Turkish?

| Bogaziçi University

This article looks at vowel reduction in Turkish from the point of view of Government Phonology, trying to establish its place in grammar, i.e. whether it is a phonological process or something else. Government Phonology employs rigid criteria to delineate the domain of phonology. While vowel reduction is in principle expressible through the loss of elements (melodic primes), its sensitivity to morphosyntactic information makes clear that it must be non-phonological. It also becomes clear that the morphosyntactic conditioning is slightly different from what is usually given in grammars of the language. The article concludes with alternatives to a phonological treatment of vowel reduction.

Keywords: domain of phonology, noun-verb split, phrases vs. heads, register, Turkish, vowel reduction
Published online: 14 June 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.175.02poc
References
Backley, Phillip
2011 An Introduction to Element Theory. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
Bromberger, Sylvain & Halle, Morris
1989 Why phonology is different. Linguistic Inquiry 20(1): 51–70.Google Scholar
Chambers, Jack K. & Trudgill, Peter
1998 Dialectology. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charette, Monik & Göksel, Aslı
1996 Licensing constraints and vowel harmony in Turkic languages. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics & Phonetics 6: 1–25.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam
1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris
1968 The Sound Pattern of English. New York NY: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Denwood, Ann
2002 K~ø: morpho-phonology in Turkish. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 12: 89–98.Google Scholar
Erguvanlı Taylan, Eser
2015 The Phonology and Morphology of Turkish. İstanbul: Boğaziçi University Press.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, John A
1976 Autosegmental Phonology. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Gussmann, Edmund
2007 The Phonology of Polish. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Harris, John
1994 English Sound Structure. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
1997 Licensing inheritance: An integrated theory of neutralisation. Phonology 14: 315–370. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1999 Release the captive coda: The foot as a domain of phonetic interpretation. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 11: 165–194.Google Scholar
2005 Vowel reduction as information loss. In Headhood, Elements, Specification and Contrastivity [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 259], Philip Carr, Jacques Durand & Colin J. Ewen (eds),119–132. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, John & Lindsey, Geoff
2000 Vowel patterns in mind and sound. In Phonological Knowledge: Conceptual and Empirical Issues, Noel Burton-Roberts, Philip Carr & Gerry Docherty (eds), 185–205. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry
1975 Phonology: Theory & Analysis. New York NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Jensen, Sean
2000 A Computational Approach to the Phonology of Connected Speech. PhD dissertation, University of London.
Kamali, Beste
2011 Topics at the PF Interface of Turkish. PhD dissertation, Harvard University.
Kaye, Jonathan
1989 Phonology: A Cognitive View. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
1990 ‘Coda’ licensing. Phonology 7(2): 301–330. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1992 On the interaction of theories of Lexical Phonology and theories of phonological phenomena. In Phonologica 1988. Proceedings of the 6th International Phonology Meeting, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Hans C. Luschützky, Oskar E. Pfeiffer & John R. Rennison (eds.), 141–155. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
1995 Derivations and interfaces. In Frontiers of Phonology: Atoms, Structures, Derivations, Jacques Durand & Francis Katamba (eds), 289–332. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Kaye, Jonathan, Lowenstamm, Jean & Vergnaud, Jean-Roger
1985 The internal structure of phonological elements: A theory of charm and government. Phonology Yearbook 2: 303–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1990 Constituent structure and government in phonology. Phonology 7(2): 193–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul
1976 Abstractness, opacity and global rules. In The Application and Ordering of Grammmatical Rules, Andreas Koutsoudas (ed.), 160–186. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Lewis, Geoffrey
1967 Turkish Grammar. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Ploch, Stefan
1999 Nasals on My Mind. The Phonetic and the Cognitive Approach to the Phonology of Nasality. PhD dissertation, University Of London.
Pöchtrager, Markus A
2010 Does Turkish diss harmony? Acta Linguistica Hungarica 57(4): 458–473. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 k-Ø and what phonology can do. Dilbilim Araştırmaları 1: 87–109.Google Scholar
2014 Alternations: The vipers in our bosom. Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi 2: 147–164.Google Scholar
Pöchtrager, Markus A. & Kaye, Jonathan
2011 What is this thing called phonology? Talk given at the Leiden University Center for Linguistics.
Sezer, Engin
1981a On non-final stress in Turkish. Journal of Turkish Studies 5: 61–69.Google Scholar
1981b The k/Ø alternation in Turkish. In Harvard Studies in Phonology, George N. Clements (ed.), 354–382. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Uygun, Dilek
2009 A Split Model for Category Specification: Lexical Categories in Turkish. PhD dissertation, Boğaziçi University.
Vural, Özlem Albaş
2006 Phonological Variation in Informal Turkish. In Advances in Turkish Linguistics, Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Turkish Linguistics. 11-13 August 2004, Semiramis Yağcıoğlu & Ayşen Cem Değer (eds), 3–14. İzmir: Dokuz Eylül University.Google Scholar
Wiese, Richard
2000 The Phonology of German. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar