Author Description

The volume by Eyup Bacanli addresses morphophonological (formal) irregularities and asymmetries found in Turkic languages. The lexically determined irregularities such as suppletion (e.g. Chuvash atte as-u 'father your father'), augments to stems (Turkish ne ney-im 'what my what'), sound drops from stems (Kazakh al- a-p 'take by taking'), restricted suffixes (e.g. Old Turkic o?ul o?l-a 'child children'), non-phonological uses of phonological allomorphs (Turkmen adam-sy 'her husband'), as well as the morphologically-determined asymmetry cases (e.g. Sakha at-im aq-qa ap-p-ar 'my horse to (the) horse to my horse') are examined in the light of a canonical approach and allomorphy conditioning. Phonologically determined radical and affixal allomorphs are regarded as regular; e.g. Chuvash pu-e > pevv-e 'her/his/its tall'. The discussion section presents a typology of irregularities on cross-linguistic and cross-Turkic levels and suggests an agglutinating hierarchy for individual Turkic languages. Numerous examples hail from turcological literature and language-targeted questionnaires. Thus, this book supplements linguists' and turcologists' understanding of the grammatical and lexical limits of Turkic languages.