Dissertation - Michael Becker

An example that does not rely on morphologically-oriented constraints, only onphonological ones, comes from the Turkish aorist 21 (Lees 1961; Napikoğlu & Ketrez 2006).This verbal suffix shows up in three forms, shown in (204). The distribution is regular inall but CVC roots that end in {r, l, n}. The aorist suffix is simply [r] after vowel-finalstems of any length; it is [-Ir] 22 after poly-syllables that end in a consonant; and [-Er] aftermono-syllables that end in an obstruent or glide. For mono-syllabic nouns that end in {r, l,n}, some roots take [-Ir], and others take [-Er].(204) Shape of stem Affix Examples 23V-final -r de-r, ye-r, uyu-r, baSla-rC-final poly-syllables -Ir gerek-ir, Ùal1S-1rObstruent-final mono-syllables -Er bit-er, öp-er{r, l, n}-final mono-syllables-Ir-Erkal-1r, gör-ürdal-ar, ör-erThe analysis in terms of markedness is fairly straightforward once some simpleassumptions about Turkish stress are made. In line with Hayes (1995a), I assume thatstress in Turkish, which by default falls on the word-final syllable, is trochaic, meaningthat the stressed final syllable is in a foot by itself. Little is reported about secondary stressin Turkish, but assuming it shows up on every other syllable from the ultima, a monosyllabicstem like [bit] shows up in the aorist with an unparsed syllable: bi(t-ér). Longerstems will have another foot before the stressed one: (gère)(k-ír). In other words, both[-Er] and [-Ir] show up inside the strong foot of the word (the main stressed foot), but [-Er] additionally demands to be in the initial, or leftmost foot of the word. To ensure that21 I am indebted to Matt Wolf and John Kingston for their help in the following analysis.22 The capital I represents a high vowel that gets its backness and roundness from the preceding vowel.The capital E represents a non-high unrounded vowel that gets is backnes from the preceding vowel.23 Glosses: say, eat, sleep, begin / need, work / finish, kiss / stay, see / dive, knit.215