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

derived stem
denominal nominal
deverbal nominal
denominal verbal
deverbal verbal
examples
yurttafl, özdefl, emektafl,
sestefl
aday, yüzey
dalga, bilge, bileflke
alg›, sezgi, sürgü, tutku
ada-, toza-, dile-, türegülümse-,an›msaat›fl-,
girifl-, benzefl-, dövüfl-
Unit 6 - Word-Formation Processes
derivational morphemes
-DAfl
-Ay
-GA
-GI
-A
-ImsA
-(I)fl
Derivational affixes in Turkish are predominantly suffixes although a number
of prefixes are possible in the words of foreign origin: bilakis, bitaraf, hemfikir,
lamekan, nahofl (examples from König, 2001: 74). The productivity of derivational
suffixes may vary from very limited to quite extensive depending on the range of
words they are used with. The most productive suffixes used to derive nouns and
verbs in Turkish were listed by Özel (1977: 21) based on a study that included the
frequency counts of the lexical entries derived by these suffixes in the fifth edition
of the Turkish Dictionary. The results are shown in Table 6.2.
S -mak -l› -l›k -c› -la- -s›z -ma -fl -ç -g›n -an -gan -sal -c›k -dafl
N 3900 1700 1600 850 750 700 500 100 110 109 85 80 80 77 45
S = derivational suffixes N = number of lexical entries
Despite the highly productive nature of suffixes, some may die out in time. For
example, the suffix -rAk was used to derive comparative forms of adjectives in old
Turkish, but no longer in standard Turkish. Instead of afla¤›rak we now say daha
afla¤›.
Table 6.1
Examples of
Derivation
Can you find some words derived by the suffixes given in Table 6.2? It is your turn!
It is your turn!
1
In their attempts to liberate Turkish from foreign elements, language reformists
1
or the neologizers working with the Turkish Language Society revived some old
It is your turn!
derivational suffixes, or borrowed suffixes of Turkic origin to form pure Turkish
words that are used productively today. Some example suffixes used 2to derive
neologisms in this way are: -mAn which forms nouns of occupation such as
It is your turn!
2
ö¤retmen, okutman, sayman, seçmen, yazman; -tay which It forms is your turn! administrative
It is your turn!
terms such as dan›flay, say›fltay, kurultay, yarg›tay; -(A)v and -(A)y which 3 form
nouns from verbs such as görev, s›nav, söylev and deney, dikey, olay (Lewis,
3
1967: 221, 226); -sAl which forms adjectives such as dinsel, örgütsel, kal›tsal; and
It is your turn!
-(I)ntI which forms nouns such as ayr›nt› (Brendemoen, 1998: 243).
4
It may be interesting to note that languages do not tend to derive all logically
possible words. For example, as the antonym of the adjective yafll› the
It is your turn!
4
morphological tools of Turkish can derive a word like *yafls›z, It or is your an turn! agentive noun
It is your turn!
from the verb çal›fl- as in *çal›fl›c› in analogy to sürücü from sür-. 5However, derivation is blocked in these cases. The reason is that Turkish happens to have
5
lexical items already filling the relevant semantic slots in the It is lexicon your turn! which the
It is your turn!
derivative would otherwise occupy. That is, when there are words like 6genç and
iflçi, the language did not necessitate the creation of additional neologisms to
6
convey the same meaning.
It is your turn!
It is your turn!
7 7
81
Table 6.2
Productivity of
Sample Derivational
Suffixes
It is your turn!
It is your turn!
8 8