LING 313 Fall 2023

Phonology and morphology of Turkish Week #4.1

LING 313 - Phonology and Morphology of Turkish

Week 4.1
Metin Bağrıaçık
metin.bagriacik@boun.edu.tr

Topic: Phonemics, consonant phonemes

Reading: ET 20-36
Objectives: The students are expected to attain knowledge in the following topics:
• phonemes and their allophones in Turkish,
• to define the precise environments for each allophone to surface, and
• to formally represent these environments.

• We have so far done two things:

– we have seen lots of ways that sounds can differ from one another: according to
voicing, aspiration, place of articulation, manner of articulation, length. . .
– we have charted the ‘sound map’ of Turkish, i.e., its phones (< Ancient Greek ϕωνή
[ph o:ne:] ‘sound’).
• Each language organize these differences in different ways.
• In each language some differences are meaningful, i.e., they create meaning differences,
whereas some are not.
• We are now starting to think about phonology, how sounds are organized within the
mental grammar of each language—in our case Turkish.
– How can we identify whether a difference is meaningful or not?
– We need to look at minimal pairs (or near minimal pairs): pairs of words that are
(almost) identical except for one phone (the one we want to investigate).
– Consider the case of voicing:

(1) kadran ‘dial plate’ [d]: voiced dental stop

(2) katran ‘tar’ [t]: voiceless dental stop

– the difference of voicing in [d] and [t] creates meaning difference. In other words
[d] and [t] are distinctive by virtue of their respective [±voice] feature. Voice is
therefore a distinctive feature in Turkish. We say that voicing creates phonemic
difference (check for other pairs as zan vs. san; çam vs. cam; far vs. var, abla vs.
kapla. . . for evidence for this)

Sounds that are contrastive in a given language are called phonemes of that language . They
are the phonological units of a language. Two phonemes stand in contrastive distribution
(they can occur in identical positions). A phoneme is then a mental category.

• Some phones, however, do not create meaning differences, in other words they are not
distinctive/contrastive, and they do not have distinctive/contrastive features. Again mini-
mal pairs:

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(3) ka[t]ran ‘tar’ unaspirated voiceless dental stop

h
(4) * ka[t ]ran ‘?’ aspirated voiceless dental stop

(5) Word initial [t] vs. [th ]

a. [th ]op ‘ball’
b. * [t]op ‘?’
(6) Intervocalic (between vowels) [t] vs. [th ]
a. ya[th ]ak ‘bed’
b. * ya[t]ak ‘?’
(7) Word final [t] vs. [th ]
a. ya[th ] ‘yacht’
b. * ya[t] ‘?’

• (3)–(7) show that [th ] and [t] do not create meaning difference i.e., they are not distinctive,
although they differ in terms of aspiration. This means that aspiration is not a distinctive
feature in Turkish (see also [ph ]il vs. *[p]il, [kh ]ara vs. *[k]ara . . . ). It creates phonetic
difference.
• [t] occurs only word-internally, in syllable final position but [th ] can never occur there.
• [th ] occurs word initially and word-internally when it is followed by a vowel, and in
word-final position, but [t] can never occur in these environments.

Two similar phones that are not contrastive are called allophones. We think them as pho-
netic variants (i.e., the surface representation) of the same phonological unit in our mental
grammar, i.e., the phoneme. The distribution of allophones is rule-governed, i.e., we know
when to expect one allophone (variant) and when to expect the other. Allophones stand in
complementary distribution (they do not occur in identical positions).

Every (allo)phone, that is the surface representation of a sound in speech, belongs to a

phoneme. Some phonemes have one surface representation (one phone) (e.g., [b]), whereas
some has more then one (e.g., [th ], [t]).

• notation for phoneme: / / e.g., /b/

• notation for (allo)phone(s): [ ] e.g., [b]

phoneme: /d/ /?/

(allo)phone(s): [d] [t] [th ]

• How can we know which of the allophones is also the mental representation, i.e., the
phome? We need to check the environments the allophones occur in. The one with more
environments is taken to be the phoneme.

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The phone which occurs in more diverse environments is the basic phoneme.

• To see how it works, consider [th ] and [t]:

– [t]: only word internally, in syllable final position.
– [th ]: word-initially, word internally in syllable-initial position, word-finally.
– [t] occurs in fewer environments than [th ]. We say in this case that [th ] is the ‘else-
where’ allophone.
– Therefore /th / is the phoneme and it has two allophones: [th ], [t].

We indicate the environments in which allophones occur as phonological rules:

/th /: [t] / $ (= [th ] appears as [t] when in syllable-final position)

[th ] elsewhere

Some useful signs:

$. . . #: syllable boundary inside a word
#: word boundary
: the location of the sound

Aim: identify phonemes and their allophones in Turkish.

1 Consonants

1.1 Oral stops and affricates

• [p, ph , b]; [th , t, d]; [ch , Í]; [kh , k, kffh , kff, g]; [tSh , tS, dZ]

• Voicing is distinctive, whereas aspiration is not; therefore

• /ph /, /b/, /th /, /d/, /ch / /Í/, /kh /, /g/, /tSh /, /dZ/ are t phonemes.

• How about their (allo)phones?

– Observe the rules I provide in the table below and fill in the empty cells with correct
phonological rules.

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Phoneme (Allo)phone(s) Rules

[p] / $
/ph / [p], [ph ] /ph /:
[ph ] elsewhere

/b/ [b] no rule!

[t]: / $
/th / [t], [th ] /th /:
[th ] elsewhere

/d/ [d]

/ch / [ch ]

/Í/ [Í]

[k] / V[+back] $

[kh ] /$ V[+back] & / # V[+back] & / V[+back] #

/kh / [k], [kh ], [kff], [kffh ] /kh /:
[kff] / V[−back] $

[kffh ] /$ V[−back] & / # V[−back] & / V[−back] #

[g]
/g/ [g], [g] /g/:
ff
[g]
ff
[tS]
/tSh / [tS], [tSh ] /tSh :
[tSh ]

/dZ/ [dZ]

Table 1: Oral stop and fricative phonemes and their allophones

/kh / ←why did I choose this one as the phoneme?

[kh ] [k] [kffh ] [kff]

2 Consonants (Cont.’d)

2.2 Fricatives
• [F, B], [f, v], [s, z], [S, Z], [ç], [x], [h]

• voicing!

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• /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /S/, /Z/, /h/ (not complete!)

Phoneme (Allo)phone(s) Rules

[F]
/f/ [F], [f] /f/:
[f]

[B]
/v/ [B], [V], [v] /v/: [V]

[v]

/s/ [s]

/z/ [z]

/S/ [S]

/Z/ [Z]

[ç]
/h/ [ç], [x], [h] /h/: [x]

[h]

2.3 Non-vocalic sonorants

2.3.1 Nasals
• [m]; [M]; [n]; [N, N]
ff
• /m/, /n/

/m/ /n/

2.3.2 Liquids, glides [M]

• [R, ô, R], [l, L, ë], [j]
˚
• /R/; /l/; /L/, /j/

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Phoneme (Allo)phone(s) Rules

[M]
/m/ [M], [m] /m/:
[m]

[N]

[nff]
/n/ [N], [N], [M], [n] /n/:
ff
[M]

[n]

Phoneme (Allo)phone(s) Rules

[R]
˚
/R/ [R], [ô], [R] /R/: [ô]
˚
[R]

[l]
/ë/ [l], [ë] /ë/:
[ë]

/L/ [L]

/j/ [j]

2.4 Long consonants

• ET, pg. 33 (These long consonants should be added to the phonemic chart!)

(8) a. emmi vs. emi

b. kıssa vs. kısa
c. tekke vs. teke

3 Vowels
First short vowels. . .

• [a, aff], [o, off], [u, uff], [W], [i], [y], [ø], [e], [æ]

• Nota bene: We have also identified vowels at the word-final position, i.e., [Y, U, I, E], you
can ignore these in any given assignment if you want.

Vowel phonemes (first version):

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Phoneme (Allo)phone(s) Rules

[aff]
/a/ [aff], [a] /a/:
[a]

[off]
/o/ [off], [o] /o/:
[o]

[uff]
/u/ [uff], [u] /u/:
[u]

/W/ [W]

/y/ [y]

/ø/ [ø]

[æ]
/e/ [E], [e] /e/:
[e]

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