Cover not available
Part of
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. 235–262

Variability in the realization of agreement in Turkish

A morphotactic account

| Leiden University & University of Tübingen

Subject agreement in Turkish usually appears verb-finally. However, in certain cases agreement may appear non-finally. Furthermore, in certain dialects, and in colloquial speech, agreement may appear both finally and non-finally, yielding doubling. Previous accounts do not consider double agreement, and therefore are explanatorily inadequate. This paper proposes an account in which medial agreement is derived via reduplicating a string of morphemes that includes agreement, followed by deletion of some of the duplicate or original morphemes. While medial agreement involves reduplication plus deletion of one of the occurrences of agreement, I claim that double agreement involves reduplication but without deletion of the base or the reduplicant of agreement. My account is an adapted version of the morphological metathesis accounts that were proposed for double agreement in Spanish (see Mare 2018 for an overview).

Keywords: deletion, morphotactics, morphosyntax, displacement, reduplication, subject agreement, Turkish, variability
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Distribution of subject agreement in the Turkish verbal domain
  • 3.Güneş (2020): Agr as a dissociated morpheme
  • 4.Turkish medial/double Agr via Generalized Reduplication
    • 4.1Generalized Reduplication in the previous literature
    • 4.2Generalized Reduplication applied to Turkish Agr
    • 4.3Restricting the application of GR in the Turkish verbal domain
  • 5.Why GR in Turkish?
  • 6.Summary
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.215.09gun
References
Arregi, Karlos & Nevins, Andrew
2012 Morphotactics: Basque Auxiliaries and the Structure of Spellout. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 Beware Occam’s syntactic razor: Morphotactic analysis and Spanish mesoclisis. Linguistic Inquiry 49(4): 1–125. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barbiers, Sjef
2008 Microvariation in syntactic doubling – An introduction. In Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling, Sjef Barbiers, Olaf Koeneman, Marika Lekakou, & Margreet van der Ham (eds), 1–34. Bingley: Emerald. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baydar, Turgut
2012 Erzincan ve yöresi ağızlarında -sA enklitiği (The -sA enclitic in the dialects of Erzincan and its locality). SÜ, SBE, Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 31: 83–92.Google Scholar
Bekar, Beytullah
2018 Eski Uygur Türkçesinde farklı bir birleşik zaman çekimi (A different compound tense inflection in Old Uighur Turkish). Rumelide Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi August 2018: 123–133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bobaljik, Jonathan David
2008 Where’s phi? Agreement as a post-syntactic operation. In Phi-theory: Phi-features across Modules and Interfaces, David Adger, Susana Béjar & Daniel Harbour (eds), 295–328. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Doğan, Talip
2019 (Güney Azerbaycan) Urmiye ağzında fiillerin birleşik çekimi ve -(y)(A)rdlA(r) biçimi [The compound tense of verbs in Urmia dialect (South Azerbaijani) and the form of -(y)(A)rdlA(r)]. Türk Dili Araştırmaları Yıllığı – Belleten 67: 215–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Embick, David
1997 Voice and the Interfaces of Syntax. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
2015 The Morpheme: A Theoretical Introduction. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enç, Mürvet
2004 Functional categories in Turkish. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics [MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 46], Aniko Csirmaz, Youngjoo Lee & Mary Ann Walter (eds), 208–226. Cambridge MA: MIT.Google Scholar
Eraslan, Kemal
2012 Eski Uygur Türkçesi grameri (The Grammar of Old Uighur Turkish). Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu.Google Scholar
Ercilasun, Ahmet Bican
1984 Kutadgu Bilig grameri-fiil (The Grammar of Qutadğu Bilig – The Verb). Ankara: Gazi Üniversitesi.Google Scholar
Erdem-Akşehirli, Münevver
2018 Non-canonical Morphological Patterns in Turkish: Evidence from Person-number Markers. MA thesis, Boğaziçi University.
Gemalmaz, Efrasiyap
1973 Erzurum ili Ağızları: İnceleme – metinler – sözlük ve dizinler (The Dialects of Erzurum: Examination – Texts – Dictionary and Indices). PhD dissertation, Ataturk University.
Good, Jeff & Yu, Alan
2000 Affix-placement variation in Turkish. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Jeff Good & Alan Yu (eds), 63–74. Berkeley CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
2005 Morphosyntax of two Turkish subject pronominal paradigms. In Clitic and Affix Combinations [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 74], Lorie Heggie, & Francisco Ordóñez (eds), 315–341. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göksel, Aslı
1988 Bracketing paradoxes in Turkish nominal compounds. In Studies on Turkish Linguistics, Sabri Koç (ed.), 287–292. Ankara: METU.Google Scholar
2006 Pronominal participles in Turkish and lexical integrity. Lingue e Linguaggio (1): 105–126.Google Scholar
2007 Morphology and syntax inside the word: Pronominal participles of headless relative clauses in Turkish. In On-line Proceedings of The Fifth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting, Fréjus, 15–18 September 2005, Geert Booij, Luca Ducceschi, Bernard Fradin, Emiliano Guevara, Angela Ralli & Sergio Scalise (eds). Bologna: University of Bologna.Google Scholar
2010 Focus in words with truth values. Iberia 2(1): 89–112.Google Scholar
Göksel, Aslı & Kerslake, Celia
2005 Turkish, A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Güner, Galip
2013 Kıpçak Türkçesi grameri (The grammar of Kipchak Turkish). Ankara: Kesit.Google Scholar
Güneş, Güliz
2020 Interface of syntax and prosody in Turkish. In Kuramsal ve Uygulamalı Sesbilim [Theoretical and Applied Phonology], İpek Pınar Uzun (ed.), to appear, Seçkin Yayınevi, Ankara.Google Scholar
Güneş, Güliz & Göksel, Aslı
2017 The source of variable prominence in complex morphosyntactic words in Turkish. Paper presented at the Com(parative) Syn(tax) meeting, February 2017, Leiden University.
Halle, Morris & Marantz, Alec
1993 Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In The View from Building 20. Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger, Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds), 111–176. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Harris, James & Halle, Morris
2005 Unexpected plural inflections in Spanish: Reduplication and metathesis. Linguistic Inquiry 36(2): 195–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ido, Shinji
2003 Agglutinative Information: A Study of Turkish Incomplete Sentences. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
İlhan, Nadir
2009 Türk Dilinde Çokluk (Plurality in Turkish). Elazığ: Manas Yayınları.Google Scholar
Kabak, Barış
2007 Turkish suspended affixation. Linguistics 45(2): 311–347. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kahnemuyipour, Arsalan & Kornfilt, Jaklin
2010 The syntax and prosody of Turkish ‘pre-stressing’ affixes. In Interfaces in Linguistics: New Research Perspectives, Rafaella Folli & Christiane Ulbrich (eds). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S.
2010 Toward a syntactic reinterpretation of Harris and Halle (2005). In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2008: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Groningen 2008 [Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2], Reineke Bok-Bennema, Brigitte Kampers-Manhe & Bart Hollebrandse (eds), 145–170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kelepir, Meltem
2001 Topics in Turkish Syntax: Clausal Structure and Syntax. PhD dissertation, MIT.
2007 Copular forms in Turkish, Turkmen and Nogay. In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics 54, Meltem Kelepir & Balkız Öztürk (eds), 83–100. Cambridge MA: MITWPL.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin
1984 Case Marking, Agreement and Empty Categories in Turkish. PhD dissertation, Harvard University.
1986 The stuttering prohibition and morpheme deletion in Turkish. In Proceedings of the Turkish Linguistics Conference, Ayhan Aksu Koç & Eser Erguvanlı Taylan (eds), 59–83. Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Publications.Google Scholar
1996 On some copular clitics in Turkish. In ZAS Papers in Linguistics: Papers on the Conference ‘The Word as a Phonetic Unit’, Artemis Alexiadou, Nanna Fuhrop, Paul Law & Sylvia Lohken (eds). 96–114. Berlin: Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft.Google Scholar
1997 Turkish. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lees, Robert B.
1962 A compact analysis for the Turkish personal morphemes. In American Studies in Altaic Linguistics [Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series 13], Nicholas Poppe (ed.), 141–176. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Lewis, Geoffrey L.
1967 Turkish Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Mare, María
2018 Unexpected agreement in Spanish revisited. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 3(1): 122. 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newell, Heather
2008 Aspects of the Morphology and Phonology of Phases. PhD dissertation, McGill University.
Öztürk, Fatih
2018 Esentepe Mahallesi Örneğinde Sarıveliler Ağzı ve Özellikleri (An example on Esentepe Quarter, Sariveliler accent and its features). In Ermenek araştırmaları-II, Hüseyin Muşmal, Erol Yüksel, Mehmet Ali Kapar, & Ömer Çeçen (eds), 217–232. Konya: Palet yayınları.Google Scholar
Sebüktekin, Hikmet
1984 Turkish word stress: Some observations. In Proceedings of the Turkish Linguistics Conference, Eser Erguvanlı-Taylan & Ayhan Aksu-Koç (eds), 295–307. Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Publications.Google Scholar
Sezer, Engin
2001 Finite inflection in Turkish. In The Verb in Turkish [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 44], Eser Erguvanlı Taylan (ed.), 1–45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Shwayder, Kobey
2015 Words and Subwords: Phonology in a Piece-based Syntactic Morphology. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Skinner, Tobin
2009 Investigations of Downward Movement. PhD dissertation, McGill University.
Şen, Serkan
2016 Eski Uygur Türkçesi Dersleri (Lectures on Old Uighur Turkish). İstanbul: Kesit Yayınları.Google Scholar
Tat, Deniz & Kornfilt, Jaklin
2018 Haplology within M-words and P-words: Revisiting the stuttering prohibition in Turkish. Indiana University Linguistics Club Working Papers 18(2): 1–28.Google Scholar
Tekin, Feridun
1994 Kaman ve yöresi ağızları (Dialects of Kaman and its Vicinity). MA thesis, Erciyes University.
Timurtaş, Faruk Kadri
2005 Eski Türkiye Türkçesi (Old Turkey Turkish). Ankara: Akçağ.Google Scholar
Türk, Vahıt
1996 Türkçede şimdiki zaman kavramı, çekimleri ve ekleri (The notion of present tense, its paradigms and inflections in Turkish). Türk Dili Araştırmaları Yıllığı – Belleten 44: 291–340.Google Scholar
Yükseker, Hitay
1995 How many ‘-ler/lar’s are there in Turkish. In Proceedings of the 1995 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, Päivo Koskinen (ed.), 638–649. Toronto: University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Zanon, Ksenia
2014 On the status of TP in Turkish. Studies in Polish Linguistics 9(3): 163–201.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Güneş, Güliz
2021. Morphosyntax and Phonology of Agreement in Turkish. Syntax 24:2 ► pp. 143 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.