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Turkish phonology
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Turkish phonology
The phonology of Turkish deals with current phonology and phonetics, particularly of Istanbul Turkish. A notable feature of the phonology of Turkish is a system of vowel harmony that causes vowels in most words to be either front or back and either rounded or unrounded. Velar stop consonants have palatal allophones before front vowels.
Phonetic notes:
Because of assimilation, an initial voiced consonant of a suffix is devoiced when the word it is attached to ends in a voiceless consonant. For example,
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨ı⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨ü⟩. There are no phonemic diphthongs in Turkish and when two vowels are adjacent in the spelling of a word, which only occurs in some loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound (e.g. aile [a.i.le], laik [la.ik]). In some words, a diphthong in the donor language (e.g. the [aw] in Arabic نَوْبَة [naw.ba(t)]) is replaced by a monophthong (for the example, the [œ] in nöbet [nœ.bet]). In some other words, the diphthong becomes a two-syllable form with a semivocalic /j/ in between.
With some exceptions, native Turkish words follow a system of vowel harmony, meaning that they incorporate either exclusively back vowels (/a, ɯ, o, u/) or exclusively front vowels (/e, i, œ, y/), as, for example, in the words bıçak ('knife') and Türkiye ('Turkey'). /o œ/ only occur in the initial syllable. Native Turkish grammar books call the backness harmony major vowel harmony, and the combined backness and lip harmony minor vowel harmony.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being three-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by three features: front/back, rounded/unrounded, and high/low, resulting in eight possible combinations, each corresponding to one Turkish vowel, as shown in the table.
Vowel harmony of grammatical suffixes is realized through "a chameleon-like quality", meaning that the vowels of suffixes change to harmonize with the vowel of the preceding syllable. According to the changeable vowel, there are two patterns:
The vowel /œ/ does not occur in grammatical suffixes. In the isolated case of /o/ in the verbal progressive suffix -i4yor it is immutable, breaking the vowel harmony such as in yürüyor ('[he/she/it] is walking'). -iyor stuck because it derived from a former compounding "-i yorı".
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Turkish phonology
The phonology of Turkish deals with current phonology and phonetics, particularly of Istanbul Turkish. A notable feature of the phonology of Turkish is a system of vowel harmony that causes vowels in most words to be either front or back and either rounded or unrounded. Velar stop consonants have palatal allophones before front vowels.
Phonetic notes:
Because of assimilation, an initial voiced consonant of a suffix is devoiced when the word it is attached to ends in a voiceless consonant. For example,
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨ı⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨ü⟩. There are no phonemic diphthongs in Turkish and when two vowels are adjacent in the spelling of a word, which only occurs in some loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound (e.g. aile [a.i.le], laik [la.ik]). In some words, a diphthong in the donor language (e.g. the [aw] in Arabic نَوْبَة [naw.ba(t)]) is replaced by a monophthong (for the example, the [œ] in nöbet [nœ.bet]). In some other words, the diphthong becomes a two-syllable form with a semivocalic /j/ in between.
With some exceptions, native Turkish words follow a system of vowel harmony, meaning that they incorporate either exclusively back vowels (/a, ɯ, o, u/) or exclusively front vowels (/e, i, œ, y/), as, for example, in the words bıçak ('knife') and Türkiye ('Turkey'). /o œ/ only occur in the initial syllable. Native Turkish grammar books call the backness harmony major vowel harmony, and the combined backness and lip harmony minor vowel harmony.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being three-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by three features: front/back, rounded/unrounded, and high/low, resulting in eight possible combinations, each corresponding to one Turkish vowel, as shown in the table.
Vowel harmony of grammatical suffixes is realized through "a chameleon-like quality", meaning that the vowels of suffixes change to harmonize with the vowel of the preceding syllable. According to the changeable vowel, there are two patterns:
The vowel /œ/ does not occur in grammatical suffixes. In the isolated case of /o/ in the verbal progressive suffix -i4yor it is immutable, breaking the vowel harmony such as in yürüyor ('[he/she/it] is walking'). -iyor stuck because it derived from a former compounding "-i yorı".