TRANSFORMATIONAL GENERATIVE TURKISH GRAMMAR

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3 TRANSFORMATIONAL TURKISH GENERATIVE GRAMMAR TURKISH GRAMMAR FOREWORD The Turkish Grammar book that you have just started reading is quite different from the grammar books that you read in schools. This kind of Grammar is known as traditional grammar. The main difference of a traditional grammar and that of a transformational one is that the first one describes a natural language as a static object, but the second one describes both the parts of the language engine and how it runs. This is like learning about a motionless car. There is something lacking in this description. It is the dynamics of the parts of a car that runs a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour. Traditional grammars describe only the physical appearance of a language; they do not mind what goes on behind the curtain. The mind of a human being works like the engine of a sports car. It arranges and chooses words matching one another, transforms simple sentence units to use in different parts of sentences, and recollects morphemes and phonemes to be produced by the human speech organs. All these activities are simultaneously carried out by the human mind. Another point that the traditional grammarians generally miss is that they write the grammar of a certain language to teach it to those who have been learning it from the time when they were born up to the time when they discover something called grammar. This is like teaching a language to professional speakers. Then, what is the use of a grammar? I believe most people were acquainted with it when they started learning a foreign language. Therefore, a grammar written for those who are trying to learn a second language is very useful both in teaching and learning a second language. I started teaching English as a second language in 1952, a long time ago. Years passed and one day I found myself as a postgraduate Fulbright student at the University of Texas at Austin in Although I studied there for only a short period, I learnt enough from Prof. Archibald A. Hill and Dr. De Camp to stimulate me to learn more about Linguistics. After I came back to Turkey, it was difficult to find books on linguistics in booksellers in Istanbul. Thanks to The American Library in Istanbul, I was able to borrow the books that attracted my attention. In those books, I discovered Noam Chomsky, whose name I had not heard during my stay in the U.S.A. I must confess that I am indebted to the scholars and the library above in writing this Turkish Grammar. I am also grateful to my son Dr. Özgür Göknel who encouraged me to write this book and to Vivatinell Warwick U.K., which sponsored to publish it. YÜKSEL GÖKNEL 2

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5 CONTENTS Page Foreword 2 Contents 4 Transformational Generative Grammar 8 Turkish Grammar 17 Turkish Vowel and Consonant Harmony 18 Vowel Harmony 18 Consonant Harmony 20 Morphemes and Allomorphs 22 Derivational Morphemes and their Allomorphs 23 Morphemes Attached to Noun Stems to Produce Nouns 23 Morphemes Attached to Noun Stems to Produce Adjectives 24 Morphemes Attached to Adjective Stems to Produce Nouns 26 Morphemes Attached to Verb Stems to Produce Nouns 26 Morphemes Attached to Verb Stems to Produce Adjectives 28 Morphemes Attached to Noun Stems to Produce Verbs 30 Morphemes Attached to Adjective Stems to Produce Verbs 30 Using Adjectives as Adverbs 33 Morphemes Attached to Noun Stems to Produce Adverbs 33 Inflectional Morphemes (Çekim Ekleri) 33 The Inflectional Morphemes Attached To Nouns 34 The Defining [İ] Morpheme and its Allomorphs [i, ı, ü, u] 34 [E], [DE], [DEN] morphemes 38 Possessor + Possessed Noun Compounds (İsim Tamlamaları) 47 Definite Noun Compounds (Belirtili İsim Tamlamaları) 48 Indefinite Noun Compounds (Belirtisiz İsim Tamlamaları) 53 Noun Compounds Without Suffixes (Takısız Tamlamalar) 54 Noun + Infinitive Compounds (İsim Mastar Tamlamaları) 55 Prepositions (Eng) and Postpositions (Turk) (Edatlar) 56 Primary Stress, Secondary Stress and Intonation 57 English Prepositions and Turkish Postpositions 65 The Inflectional Morphemes Attached To Verbs 68 The Simple Present be 69 The Present Modals with Verb be 77 must be 77 can t be 78 may be 79 may not be 80 The Question Forms of Verb be 80 have to be, should be, ought to be, needn t be 81 have to be (zorundayım) 82 needn t be (gerek yok) 88 The Simple Past Verb be 83 4

6 Interrogative Words 86 [MİŞ] (Rumor, Inference) (söylenti, anlam çıkarma) 89 Future Form Of be (will be) 91 The there is, there are ; have, (have got) 92 there used to be, used to have 93 there must (may) be, there can t be, there is going to be 93 Imperatıves and Wıshes 94 Wısh 96 The Simple Present Tense (Geniş Zaman) 97 The Verbs Ending With Vowels 100 Some Noun Stems Used Together With et, `yap, işle to Produce Verbs 101 The Negative Form of the Simple Present Tense 103 The Simple Present Positive Question 105 The Simple Present Negative Question 106 The Question Words Used in the Simple Present Tense 107 The Present Continuous and the Present Perfect Continuous 109 The Verbs That Are Not Used In the Simple Present in Turkish 113 Turkish Verb Frames (Türkçe de Fiil Çatıları) 115 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 115 Reflexive Verbs 115 The Passive Transformation of the Intransitive Verbs 117 Reciprocal Verbs (İşteş Fiiller) 118 Both Transitively and Intransitively Used English Verbs 120 The Simple Past and the Present Perfect 125 Miş li Past Tense (Rumor and Inference) (Miş li Geçmiş) 132 The Simple Future and be going to 136 The Past Continuous Tense 139 The Past Perfect Continuous Tense 142 Was (were) going to 143 used to 143 The Rumor Forms of The Simple Present and The Present Cont. 145 The Past Perfect Tense 146 The Future Continuous Tense 147 The Future Perfect Tens 148 Infinitives (Mastarar) 148 The [mek, mak] Infinitives 150 The [me, ma] infinitives 153 The [iş, ış, üş, uş] infinitives 159 The [dik, dık, dük, duk, tik, tık, tük, tuk] infinitives 159 The Passive Infinitive 160 Modals 162 Present Modals 162 can, may [e-bil, a-bil] 162 must [meli, malı] 166 have to (zorunda) 168 needn t (don t have to) 168 5

7 should (ought to) 169 Past Modals 171 Could 171 was (were) able to 172 would, could (polite request) 173 Perfect Modals 174 must have 174 can t (couldn t) have 176 should have (ought to have) 177 may have 178 might have 179 needn t have 179 didn t need to 179 Transformations (English) 180 The Nominalization of the Simple English Sentences 181 The Simple Sentences Transformed Into Determiners 185 The Productivity of Natural Languages 187 TheTransformed Simple Sentences Used as Adverbs 189 Turkish Sentence Nominalizations 191 Turkish Simple Sentence Nominalization 193 1: V - [DİK] - [pers] - ([İ]) 194 Simple Sentences with Verb Stem ol (be) 196 Chain Noun Compounds V- [DİK]- [pers]-([i]) 199 Nominalized Sentences Containing question words 202 Turkish Determiner + Determined Compounds 204 The Passive Transformation 211 The Verb Frames 213 The Structural Composition of the Causative Verb Frames 214 A Short List of Verb Frames 215 The Order Of Allomorphs 218 Causative Verb Frame Examples 219 Passive Causative 219 Some Example Sentences of the Verb Frames 220 Adverb Clauses (Syntactic Adverbs) 262 Time 262 before 262 after 266 when 268 while 271 as soon as 273 until 274 by and by the time 276 since 277 Cause and Reason 279 6

8 Concession and Contrast 281 Purpose 283 Place 287 Manner 287 as 287 as if (as though) 288 Result 290 so that such that 291 too + adjective + to + V + için and adjective + enough + to + Verb 292 Degree 293 Comparative Degree 293 Superlative Degree 295 Positive or Negative Equality 296 Parallel Proportion 297 Wish 298 wish + would 298 wish + past subjunctive 296 wish + past perfect or perfect modal 300 Conditional Sentences 300 Present Real Supposition 301 Present Unreal (contrary to fact) Supposition 303 Past Real Supposition 304 Past Unreal (contrary to fact) Supposition 304 Orders and Requests 306 Plain Orders and Requests 306 Polite Requests 307 Polite Refusals 308 Offers 308 { V + [İP] } 309 Question Tags ( değil mi?) 310 So do I (Neither do I) 311 Conjunctions and Transitional Phrases 311 Intensifiers 318 Reported Speech 322 Symbols and Abbreviations 324 References 325 7

9 TRANSFORMATIONAL GENERATIVE GRAMMAR Before we begin with the fundamentals of the Turkish Grammar, it may be useful to start with a short summary of the essential concepts of the Transformational Generative Grammar. This revolutionary grammar began to be discussed on the linguistics stage after Prof. Noam Chomsky had published his first book Syntactic Structures in In his book, he claims that there is another abstract layer of meaning and language generating system below the words and sentences that we hear or read. He calls it deep structure. The chain of words that we actually hear, read or even picture in our minds before articulating or writing it is called surface structure. To understand these two layers of structures, let us first consider the following surface structure sentence: The brown cat was chased by the black dog. If we are asked to interpret this sentence, we can easily dig out three reasonable short thoughts out of it and understand the following: the cat was brown, the dog was black the dog chased the cat These three thoughts, which are considered nearly the same in all natural languages, have been developed and shaped in the labyrinths of the mind as deep structures before they are worded in a language. How the items of these thoughts are gained, stored, and retrieved by the human mind is the concern of Cognitive Linguistics. These shortest groups of thought without words, which covers concrete and abstract concepts and their characteristics and the experiences of an individual are transformed and shaped into specific language words, morphemes and rules to be used in the Nominal Phrase + Verbal Phrase mentally inborn sentence pattern. In the first step, the abstract thought the cat was brown, which includes some fundamental concepts such as subject, object, verb, time, place and reason, etc. is transformed into the cat was brown" in English, or "kedi kahverengi idi" in Turkish surface structures. This thought can be transformed into any natural language in the world with the help of the specific lexical, transformational, and phonological rules of any target language. Using the same transformational rules, the mind can also transform the dog was black into the black dog, and the cat was brown into the brown cat. When these two transformed units are embedded into the sentence the dog chased the cat, we get the sentence the black dog chased the brown cat. If we want to use this last sentence in the NP part of the VP, (V + NP), we transform it into the black dog that chased the brown cat. Then, we use it after the verb V of the sentence, so the sentence becomes: 8

10 The gardener kicked the black dog that chased the brown cat. NP V NP VP The dog chased the cat can also be transformed into other sentence types such as: The cat was chased by the dog, and the cat that was chased by the dog, etc. The transformed and worded surface structures can also be operated the other way round by the listener or the reader that has heard or read the surface structure. This activation is simultaneously carried out by the mind of an individual by digging out the deep structures by interpretation. The aim of this book is not to teach Transformational Generative Grammar, but to rewrite a Turkish Grammar in the light of American Linguistics, which has been developed since Bloomfield. A Transformational Generative Grammar aims not only at describing a specific grammar such as English, but it also aims at describing all the grammars of all natural languages. It uses initials to cover all the words and phrase structure rules of all languages. In all languages, there are Nominal Phrases and Verbal Phrases, and there are nouns, determiners, adjectives and adverbs Theorists of The Transformational Generative linguistics generally agree that there is a syntactic component in the mind of a human being that keeps, coordinates, and works the base component, the semantic component, the transformational component, and the phonological component coherently. Working in close coordination, these language-producing components form sentences and help to produce the sounds of a language. People also receive and analyze these sounds deep in the mind until they understand them. In order to understand this interwoven, interactive, and complicated mechanism and process, it is better to begin with the semantic component that accumulates all the words and morphemes of a certain language with all the characteristics embedded in them. For example, when we think of the word boy, we know that it is masculine, young, and able to do all human activities. However, when we use the word apple, we already know that it is fruit, it is eaten, it may be red or green, and it has a certain taste and smell, etc. Besides the words (lexicon) of a certain language, the semantic component and the syntactic component also possesses the innate common phrase structures of the Universal Grammar shared by all human beings. (Further explanations of it can be found in the article Chomsky and the Universal Grammar written by Don Crus.) 9

11 The phrase structures are flexible and expandable mental molds where linguistic potential is shaped and developed. With the assistance of the transformational and phonological components, t hese Phrase Structures produce sentences. The surface structure is what we actually articulate or write, or even what we think in words before we speak or write. The sentence producing system starts to work with the intention of an individual to express him in words. He shapes his thoughts into Phrase Structure mold, then words and articulates them. During this procedure, the semantic component chooses words and other language units; arranges and installs them in Phrase Structure patterns. The first mental mold is the mold of Nominal Phrase (NP). The language units suitable for this mold may be pronouns: I, you, he, etc., proper nouns: Jack, Mary, Ahmet, etc., adjective compounds: a beautiful lady, a sunny morning, an interesting story, a heavy basket Jack s car, a noun compound: the garden gate, the name of the dog, the result of the examination, a phrase: the books on the table, the children in the garden, a bunch of flowers for my mother ; or a transformed simple sentence: the book that I read, the boys that were fighting, what he said, the reason why I was late, etc. All these units are shaped and designed by the help of the syntactic, the semantic, the transformational and the phonological components working coherently. The Verbal Phrase (VP) is composed of a Nominal Phrase (NP), whose content is given above, and a Verb (V). The Verb mold covers verb stems, and all auxiliary verbs and suffixes, such as, is, are, has, been, have, must, can, will, [İNG], [ED], etc. In Turkish, in place of these auxiliary verbs, there are suffixes (morphemes). All these verb stems and suffixes are ended with personal suffixes (morphemes) in Turkish, which will be explained in detail in the following chapters. There is another important language unit in a nominal phrase called Determiner (D). These units, which define or describe nouns, are placed before or after nouns according to the characteristics of a certain language. The article "the" is a sign that implies an adjective, an adjective phrase, or an adjective clause following a noun. Only the words "the book" do not convey satisfactory information. When someone says "the book", the listener thinks that something should be following these words. If he says "the red book", "the book on the table" or "the book that I read", the listener is satisfied with it, and waits for the Verbal Phrase to be uttered to complete the sentence. As a result, we can say that the article "the" is a sign that implies the real determiner that may be either mentally in store in one's mind, or in real words following or preceding the noun. Therefore, all adjectives, 10

12 adjective phrases, and adjective clauses are determiners that are implied by the article "the". In Turkish, when nouns are used in the subject position, no defining allomorphs or words like "the" are used. For example, in the sentences "Mavi kitap benim" The blue book is mine, "Masanın üzerindeki kitap benim" The book on the table is mine or "Dün okuduğun kitap benim" The book that you read yesterday is mine, the nouns "kitap" are used without the determining (suffixes) morphemes [İ] in Turkish. In these sentences "mavi", "masanın üsündeki" and "dün okuduğun" expressions are enough to determine the nouns "kitap". However, when the same expressions are used in the object position, when they are determined, they inevitably take one of the [i, ı, ü, u] defining allomorphs attached to nouns, pronouns or to the determiner + determined compounds: Masa-nın üstündeki kitap-ı gör-üyor musun? (ma*sa*nın / üs*tün*de*ki / ki*ta*bı / gö*rü*yor / mu*sun ) Can you see the book on the table? Masa-nın üstündeki kitap benim. (ma*sa*nın / üs*tün*de*ki / ki*tap / be*nim ) The book on the table is mine. As it is seen, when the underlined part of the above expression is used in the object position, the noun kitap is suffixed with the defining allomorph [İ], but when the same part is used in the subject position, it is used without the determining suffix [İ] although the noun book is determined. Some grammarians think that adjectives, adjective phrases and adjective clauses are optional elements. They are optional, but when they are aimed at determining nouns, they have to follow certain rules in Nominal Phrases. In the following example, you can see how determiners are used either preceding or following nouns: the book; the book on the table; the books that are on the table; D N D N D D N D D the book that you have read D N D The purpose of using a language is to convey thoughts or pieces of information to other people. A word or words that cannot convey them are only sounds. The order of the determiners, which define or describe nouns, are shaped by the Phrase Structure rules. The transformational and the phonological components of a specific language help them to transform thought into concrete language. For example, in Turkish sentences, the places of determiners are different from those of the English language. Consider the following example: 11

13 kitap-ı masanın üstündeki kitap-ı okuduğun kitap-ı N D D N D D N D okuduğun kitap D N N represents nouns, which are words like, apple, boy, girl, dream, happiness, koşmak, okuma, okuyuş, or pronouns like I, you, he, she, it, we, they. Besides these pronouns, there are some other pronouns called objective pronouns such as me, you, him, her, it, us and them. Furthermore, other than these pronouns, there are possessive adjectives such as my, your, his, her, its, our and their. All possessive adjectives are determiners, that is why they are named as possessive adjectives. Syntactically described, they are the possessor parts of the possessor + possessed noun compounds: my happiness her anxiety the girl s fright possessor possessed possessor possessed possessor possessed The determiner the concept is embedded in the pronouns and the possessive adjectives of the English language. That is why, the, a, that, or the like, are not used with them. For instance, the I, the you, a me, the my are impossible in English. Some linguists consider determiners as optional elements in phrase structure rules. This is because pronouns are used without determiners in English. Subject pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we and they, and object pronouns me, you, him, her, it, us, them and possessive adjectives my, your, his, etc. are all used without determiners. On the contrary, when Turkish pronouns are used in the object position, such as, ben-i, sen-i, biz-i, etc., the defining suffix [İ] morpheme, which stands for the the of the English language, is placed after ben, sen, o, biz, siz, onlar. Literally, they are written and said as ben-i I the ; sen-i you the ; o-/n/u he the ; jack- i Jack the. This the concept in English is fulfilled by changing I into me, you into you, he into him, she into her, etc. In English, people say I saw the girl. I saw her. In Turkish, people say Ben kız-ı gördüm. Ben o-/n/u gördüm. As it can be guessed, the pronoun her has a defining concept mentally embedded in it. In Turkish, however, the same concept is attached to the pronoun o as the determining morpheme [İ]. Consequently, we can say that all pronouns and proper nouns may have determiners either mentally embedded in them, or attached to them as allomorphs. When Turkish people say "masa-nın üstün-de-ki kitap", they mean 12

14 "the book on the table". In the Turkish sentence, "kitap" is without a defining suffix or a word. This is because, the adjective phrase "masanın üs-tün-deki" is enough to determine the noun "kitap". Consider the following sentences: Ben siz-i gördüm. I saw you. Ben jack -i gördüm. I saw Jack. As it is seen, the pronoun "you" and the proper noun "Jack" are used without determiners in English. However, in Turkish, both "siz-i" and "Jack-i" are used with the determining suffix [İ] when they are in the object position. The opposite process is followed with the Turkish nouns when they are in the subject position: When we want to say the book is on the table, we do not use a defining morpheme attached to the noun kitap. The absence of this defining morpheme, however, implies that the noun is defined, so the Turkish equivalent of the book is on the table is kitap-ø masanın üstünde. The zero morpheme stands for a zero mental determiner. When a noun represents all its kind, it is not used with definers or plural morphemes in Turkish as it is done in English. In Turkish, people say Ben kitap okumayı severim. In English, in the equivalent of this sentence, the plural morpheme should be used: I like reading books. This example shows us that in the Turkish sentence the word "kitap" has a plural or an all concept mentally embedded in it.. To sum up the above, we can say that no nouns or pronouns can stand without determiners in sentences. These determiners may be either separate words like "the" or "a" in English, or [i, ı, ü, u] defining allomorphs in Turkish; or they may be embedded as determining concepts in common nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. Furthermore, the nouns that are defined or described by adjective phrases do not need such defining suffıxes or words in Turkish when they are in the subject position. When we consider the following sentences, we can see how it works: The symbol S represents a sentence as a whole, which has to include all language units in it without leaving any one of them outside its composition. S I saw her. S NP + VP In this sentence, I is a Nominal Phrase that includes the determiner the embedded in it; and so is her. Saw her is a Verbal Phrase. This sentence may be one of the shortest sentences in English. The following sentences, however, are longer, but they are also composed of a Nominal Phrase and a Verbal Phrase: 13

15 S I saw a dog that was chasing a rabbit while I was driving to Ankara. NP VP S The dog that was chasing the rabbit was fierce. NP VP Just as determiners are used together with nouns, so are adverbs used around verbs to amplify their meaning by adding some important information into their function. Finally, we can say that adverbs, adverb phrases and adverb clauses are the elements of the Verbal Phrases. One important fact to add to this definition is the instability of the position of an adverb in a sentence. It may be used in the beginning, in the middle, or in the end of a sentence such as: Sometimes I met her. I sometimes met her. I met her sometimes. However, such sentences as, I met sometimes her. are not grammatical in English because such adverbs can only be used outside verb + object ; not between them. The prepositional phrases such as, on the table, or in the garden may either be used as a determiner like the books on the table, or as an adverb phrase like A girl is dancing on the table. V contains verb stems like go, clean, wash, sleep, discover, eat ; and besides them, one or more auxiliary verbs are used before them such as has cleaned, has been cleaning, may be cleaned, must have been cleaned. Some suffixes are also attached to a verb stem such as cleaned, clean-ing. These are all the contents of the symbol V. So, the verb stems, together with the auxiliary verbs and suffixes, convey a full concept of verb. The VP initials may also cover adverbs, adverb phrases, or adverb clauses as well as Nominal Phrases. However, when ad-verbs are used as intensifiers, they may also be used before adjectives and adverbs. In short, a Verbal Phrase (VP) may be composed of "NP + V" or "NP + V + Adv. In phrase structures, the plus symbol (+) is used not to show the order of words, but to show the contents of a VP. For instance, when we write VP V + NP, we do not mean that First use a verb and after it use a nominal phrase, we mean, Use a verb together with a nominal phrase. This is necessary because in some languages, like Turkish and Japanese, verbs are used after nominal phrases. Furthermore, in mathematics 5=2+3 or 5= 3+2 shows that the plus sign may not show order. At last, the arrow means that we can rewrite the previous initials as the following ones. Now, we can show how phrase structure rules of a mental sentence chain is woven and produced in any language. 14

16 Thought and language are mental faculties that are independent of one another; but they act interdependently. Thought has multiple dimensions. One stores items of thought in his mind without organizing them in a certain chain following one another. When the time comes to produce a sentence, however, these irregularly scattered items of thought are put in certain linear language molds to be produced by the speech organs. The linking bridge that transforms thought into a language is the Phrase Structure rules of the Universal Grammar. As soon as thought is directed into Phrase Structures (which are thought to be innate), they are molded into a linear system and become ready to be produced by the help of the semantic, transformational and phonological components (which are all learned) of the language-producing system of the mind. Immediately after the following abstract items of thought are transformed into the words and rules of the target language, they are materialized to be used as surface structures: INNATE SYNTACTIC ABSTRACT LEVEL S NP + VP NP D + N VP V + NP V V LEARNED SURFACE STRUCTURE S the boy + ate an apple NP the + boy VP V + an apple V ate If we apply this rule to Turkish, we get: S çocuk - Ø + bir elma yedi NP VP When a determined noun is used in the subject position, a zero defining morpheme Ø is used in Turkish. The absence of this determiner implies that the noun is defined. In other words, it means the boy. NP çocuk VP NP + V NP bir elma V yedi The above surface sentence is Çocuk bir elma yedi 15

17 One cannot use any noun in the subject or in the object position in a sentence as one wishes. For instance, when someone tries to build up sentences like The apple ate the boy. A cat chased a dream. A letter wrote a car. Happiness cleaned the house. the semantic component in the mind simultaneously interferes and eliminates these unreasonable sentence chains. Furthermore, the ungrammatical chains, such as apple an boy the ate are also eliminated because the semantic component allows only grammatically well formed sentences to be produced. In English, the determiners "a, the, some" are words, and therefore, they are not attached to noun stems. The only exception to this rule is the plural morpheme [S], which is attached to noun stems such as toys, umbrellas and books. This is completely different in Turkish. Some determiners are used before noun stems as separate words, as they are used in English, but some others are attached to stems: bir çocuk a boy, çocuk-lar boys, öğretmen-ler teachers, öğretmen-i the teacher, öğretmenler-i the teachers. In this book, hyphens (-) are inserted between stems and suffixes (allomorphs); they do not separate syllables. Syllables are separated by asterisks (*). For example, in kalem-i, the suffix [i] is separated from the noun stem kalem by a hyphen, but when syllables are separated, asterisks are used as they are used in (ka*le*mi). The syllables printed in bold types show the primarily stressed syllables in speech. In English grammars, the plural s suffix is not considered as a defining suffix because it is not a word like the or a, but when its function is considered, we can say that it defines whether a noun is either singular or plural. Furthermore, the existence or nonexistence of a plural morpheme attached to a noun or embedded in plural pronouns, such as we, you, they influence the verb form. So, we can write the boy as D + N and the boy-s as D + N + D. This is necessary because a plural morpheme effects the auxiliary verb forms, such as, are, have, and write-writes, etc. The plural forms of such verbs have to be used when a plural suffix is attached to nouns. There are some irregular plural noun forms in English: men, women, children, mice, etc. These plural nouns can be considered as plural concepts embedded in nouns. The concept D has to be extended to cover optional elements as well; such as the phrase in the garden, or the clauses, who are in the garden or who are playing in the garden. So, the phrases like the boys in the gar- 16

18 den or the boys who are playing in the garden, which are transformed sentences, can be formulated as: D+N+D+D : the =D, boy= N, s= D, who are playing in the garden = D. the boys who are playing in the garden (D+N+D+D) is a syntactic component that can occupy the places of nouns or pronouns in a sentence. Such constituents may be called syntactic nouns because they are shaped by the transformational component in order to be used in Nominal Phrases. The function of these units in sentences is nominal. How simple sentences are transformed into adverb clauses or syntactic adverbs will be explained in the adverb clauses section. Adverbs, adverb phrases, and adverb clauses are the components of Verbal Phrases when they modify verbs. These adverbial components may be used in different parts of sentences. In Turkish, all the above auxiliary verbs and suffıxes are morphemes attached to verb stems following one another. While this suffixation is being carried on, the morphemes are changed into their allomorphs as a result of the vowel and consonant harmony rules of the Turkish language, which will be described in detail in the following chapters. Some fundamental adverbial concepts such as time, place, cause, reason, wish, condition, contrast, manner or politeness, etc. are triggered by mental stimuli to be expressed in an ongoing sentence production. While this process is going on, simple sentences are transformed into dependent adverb clauses (syntactic adverbs) containing the above semantic concepts. TURKISH GRAMMAR After the above short survey of the universal Transformational Generative Grammar (with some interpretations of my own), we can begin with the sound system of The Turkish language. Turkish has 29 letters in its alphabet. Some of these letters / o, u, a, ı / and / ö, ü, e, i / are vowels, and the others / b, c, ç, d, f, g, ğ, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, ş, t, v, y, z / are consonants. All the above letters represent phonemes, that is why they are shown between / / signs. Phonemics is not interested in detailed phonetic differences. Some of the vowels / ı, ö, ü / do not exist in English. They are pronounced: /ı/ as in English again ; /ö/ as in German schön ; and /ü/ as in German hütte respectively. Among the consonants, there are the / ç, ş, ğ / phonemes, which are pronounced as ch as in church, sh as in fish ; and to produce the /ğ/ 17

19 phoneme, which does not exist in English, first produce /g/ phoneme and make it longer by letting your breath pass between your tongue and the hard palate of your mouth while vibrating your vocal cords. TURKISH VOWEL AND CONSONANT HARMONY Turkish is said to be an agglutinative language, which means suffixes are attached to stems one following the other in a row to arrange words. In order to understand how these suffix chains are formed, one should understand the vowel and consonant harmony rules of the Turkish language before one begins to attach suffixes to stems and to the suffixes following them. VOWEL HARMONY To produce a vowel harmony sequence, a Turkish speaker follows two certain harmony chains: 1. The hard vowel harmony chain. 2. The thin vowel harmony chain. 1. The hard vowel harmony chain is o u a ı 2. The thin vowel harmony chain is ö ü e i In both chains, the first vowels /o/ and /ö/ never repeat themselves. The other vowels can be repeated as many times as necessary. The arrow ( ) points to the vowel that will follow the previous one. The arrows ( ), pointing to both directions, show that /i/ may follow /e/; or /e/ may follow /i/. In the hard vowel harmony chain, /a/ and /ı/ do the same. Furthermore, besides the arrows, the letters r are put under repeatable vowels to complete our formulas: 1.The hard vowel harmony chain: o u r a r ı r 2. The thin vowel harmony chain: ö ü r e r i r As one can see, the two formulas look exactly like one another. All the words in the Turkish language follow either the first or the second harmony chain. The words borrowed from other languages do not follow these chains; but the suffixes attached to them follow the vowels of the last syllables of such words. Consequently, one can build up meaningless words made up of only vowels following the two vowel chains: For instance: o*u*u*a*ı*a*ı, o*a*ı*a, ü*ü*e*e*i, ö*e*i*e 18

20 kom*şu*ya (o*u*a); kom*şu*lar*dan (o*u*a*a); o*luş*tur*duk*la*rı*mız*dan (o*u*u*u*a*ı*ı*a); o*ku*la (o*u*a); ten*ce*re*ye (e*e*e*e) One can make up Turkish meaningless vowel chains as many as possible using the above vowel chains. I advise those who are interested in learning Turkish to make up vowel chains like the chains above, and repeat them loudly again and again. In doing so, they can memorize the Turkish vowel harmony chains easily and soundly as they learn a piece of music. When they repeat them, they may even feel and sound as if they were speaking Turkish. As it has been mentioned before, borrowed words do not follow the vowel harmony chains, but the last syllables of these words are attached to suffixes in accordance with the vowel harmony rules: patates-ler-i (pa*ta*tes*le*ri) the potatoes ; televizyon-u (te*le*viz*yo*nu) the television ; mandalina-/y/ı (man*da *li* - na*/y/ı) the tangerine ; sigara-/y/ı (si*ga*ra*/y/ı) the cigarette. The /y/ phonemes used above are glides (phonemes) inserted between two vowels to help them to pass the voice from one vowel to the following one smoothly and harmoniously. One more thing to add to the explanation above is that the words that are formed of two separate words do not follow the above vowel harmony chains: kahverengi (kahve + rengi) brown ; buzdolabı (buz + dolabı) refrigerator ; bilgisayar (bilgi + sayar) computer ; tavanarası (tavan + arası) attic. Besides the above vowel harmony rules, there are three more essential vowel rules to consider: 1.The verb stems ending with vowels drop these vowels when they are attached to the allomorphs of [İYOR]. These vowels are double underlined: bekle-iyor bekliyor; başla-ıyor başlıyor; anla-ıyor anlıyor; gizle-iyor gizliyor; oku-uyor okuyor; atla-ıyor atlıyor ye-iyor yiyor; gözle-iyor gözlüyor; gizle-iyor gizliyor 2. When the last syllables of the noun stems, the verb stems, and the inflectional morphemes end with vowels, the first vowels of the morphemes following them drop. For example, when the /i/ in the [im] allomorph drop, only the /m/ phoneme is attached to anne : "anne-im "annem. The dropped vowels are double underlined: 19