turkish phonology and morphology (türkçe ses ve b‹ç‹mb‹lg‹s‹)

Word Classes
INTRODUCTION
“There is a story among the Creeks that the birds once challenged the four-footed
animals to a ball game. All the creatures with teeth were to be on one side, and all
those with feathers were to be on the opposing team. When the designated day
came, the animals separated into the two groups, but Bat came late. At first, he
joined the animals with teeth, but they said: “No you have wings, you belong with
the birds!” He went to the birds and they said: “No, you have teeth, you belong
with the animals!” and drove him away, teasing him about his small size. He went
back to the animals with teeth and begged to play with them. Finally, they agreed,
saying: “You’re too small to help us, but since you have teeth, we’ll let you join
our team.” The ballgame began, and soon it became clear that the birds were
winning. They could catch the ball in the air where the four-footed animals couldn’t
reach it. Suddenly, when all seemed lost, Bat swooped into the air and stole the
ball from Crane. Again and again. Bat caught the ball, winning the game for the
four-footed animals. His whole team agreed that even though he was small, he
would always be classed with the animals having teeth.” (Martin, 1991: 8)
Word classes are a necessary part of any description of a language. Children
learning their language classify words as well as grammarians who write a
description of language. This is because in order to use a word in a sentence, one
should have knowledge of its part of speech or lexical category. A word stock
such as ve, uçak, kald›k, ve, senden, annem, evde, oturduk, yaflad›k, ac›mas›z,
soluksuz, evli, ancak, uçuk, apans›z, hep, oldukça is nothing more than a haphazard
collection with no organization at all. But look at this one:
uçak kald›k senden ac›mas›z hep ancak
annem oturduk soluksuz oldukça ve
evde yaflad›k evli
uçuk
apans›z
By sorting the terms in this way, it is possible to see something about how the
systems which organize language structure work. Deciding on the categories, and
words which belong inside them is a very important part of analyzing a grammar.
But how can we do it? The bat in our story was finally classed with the animals