TURKISH GRAMMAR

83055_4TURKISH_GRAMMAR_UPDATED_ACADEMIC_EDITION_YÜKSEL_GÖKNEL_OCTOBER_2012.pdf

TURKISH GRAMMAR

ACADEMIC EDITION

2012

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TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

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TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

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TURKISH GRAMMAR

ACADEMIC EDITION

2012

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TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

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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 1960. 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

TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

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TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

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TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

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TURKISH GRAMMAR

ACADEMIC EDITION

YmKSEL GPKNEL

Vivatinell Bilim-Kƺltƺr YayŦnlarŦ

2012

Vivatinell Press

Vivatinell Cosmopharmaceutics

Fetih Mah. Tunca Sk. No:2 34704

Tel: +90 216 470 09 44

Faks: +90 216 470 09 48

TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

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CONTENTS

Foreword 3

Contents 7

Logical, Morphemic, and Oral Sequencing 13

The Turkish Grammar 16

The Turkish Vowel and Consonant Harmony 17

The Vowel Harmony Sequence 17

The Consonant Harmony 19

Morphemes and Allomorphs 22

Derivational Morphemes and Their Allomorphs 23

Morphemes Attached to Nouns to Produce Nouns 23

Morphemes Attached to Nouns to Produce Adjectives 24 Morphemes Attached to Adjectives to Produce Nouns 27

Morphemes Attached to Verbs to Produce Nouns 28

Morphemes Attached to Verbs to Produce Adjectives 32

Morphemes Attached to Nouns to Produce Verbs 33

Morphemes Attached to Adjectives to Produce Verbs 34

Inflectional Morphemes and Their Allomorphs 34

Nominal Phrases 37

Adverbs and Adverbials 40

The Transformational Activity of the Logic 41

Form and Function in Languages 43

Using Adjectives as Adverbs 45

The Inflectional Morphemes 48

48
The [LE], [LE.YIN] and [E], [DE], [DEN] Inflectional Morphemes 53 [LE] allomorphs: [le, la] 53 [LE.YIN]: 54 [E], [DE], [DEN] and [LE] Morphemes 54 [E] allomorphs: [e, a] 56 [DE] allomorphs: [de, da, te, ta] 62 [DEN] allomorphs: [den, dan, ten, tan] 64 66

Definite Noun 66

Indefinite Noun Compounds 73

73
75

Prepositions and Postpositions 76

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8 Primary Stress, Secondary Stress, and Intonation 77 [E], [DE], [DEN] Morphemes + Postpositions 86

The Inflectional Morphemes Attached to Verbs 93

94
103
must be 103 105
may be 106 may not be 107

The "yes - no" Questions Used With Verb "be" 108

109
109
110
111

Interrogative Words 114

118

The 120

121
there used to be, there used to have 122 123
123
125
127

The Verbs Ending with Vowels or Consonants 131

Some Nouns Used Together With 132

The Negative Form of The Simple Present Tense 134

The Simple Present Positive Question 135

The Simple Present Negative Question 137

The Question Words Used in the Simple Present Tense 139 The Present Continuous and the Present Perfect Continuous 141 The Verbs That Are Not Used in the Simple Present in Turkish 146 148

Transitive and Intransitive Verb Frames 148

Reflexive Verb Frames 149

The Passive Transformation of the Intransitive Verbs 150

Reciprocal Verb Frames 152

Both Transitively and Intransitively Used English Verbs 153

The Simple Past and the Present Perfect 159

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The Past Continuous Tense 174

The Past Perfect Continuous Tense 178

Was (were) going to 178

used to 179 The Rumor Forms of The Simple Present and The Present Cont. 181

The Past Perfect Tense 182

The Future Continuous Tense 183

The Future Perfect Tense 184

Infinitives (Mastarar) 185

The [mek, mak] Infinitives 185

The [me, ma] Infinitives 185

nfinitives 185 nfinitives 185

Where and How the Infinitives Are Used 187

1.(a) The [mek, mak] Infinitives Used as Subject 187

1.(b) The [mak, mak] Infinitives Used before Postpositions 187

189

1.(d) The [mek, mak] Infinitives Used Attached to [DEN] Morph. 189

2.(a) The [me, ma] Infinitives Used Attached to Noun Compounds 190

-, -[me-/y/i], V-[ma]- 192 -[e, a] 196 196
- 197

4.(a) possessor noun+ V- 198

The Passive Infinitive 199

Modals 201

Present Modals 201

can, may [ebil, abil] 201 205
have to (zorunda) 207 208
should (ought to) 209

Past Modals 211

Could 211

was (were) able to 212 would, could (polite request) 213

Perfect Modals 214

must have 214

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should have (ought to have) 217 may have 218 might have 219 219
220

Transformations (English) 221

The Nominalization of the Simple English Sentences 221 The Transformation of the Simple Sentences into Determiners 226

The Productivity of the Natural Languages 228

TheTransformed Simple Sentences Used as Adverbial Clauses 230

Turkish Sentence Nominalizations 232

Turkish Simple Sentence Nominalization 235

Transformed Nominal Phrases 236

The infinitives with [me, ma]: 237

238
Simple Sentence Nominalization 1: V - - [pers] - 238 -[ecek, acak]-[pers]- 239 --[duk]-[pers]- 240 --[duk]]-[pers]- 240

Simple Sentences with the Verb root 240

Chain Noun Compounds 241

2. V- - [pers]- 243

V--[duk]-[pers]- 247

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250
Simple Sentences and Transformed Nominal Phrases 255 The Passive Transformation and the Passive Verb Frames 257

The Verb Frames 260

The Structural Composition of the Causative Verb Frames 261

A Short List of Verb Frames 262

The Order of Morphemes 268

Causative Verb Frame Examples 269

The Passive Causative 270

Syllabication 270

Dividing the Verb Compositions into Syllables 279 The Rumor Forms of the Simple Present, Continuous and Future Tenses 291

Negative Verb Compositions 294

Some Example Sentences of the Verb Frames 295

TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

11 Adverbial Clauses (Postpositional Adverbial Phrases) 340

Time 340

before 340 after 345 when and while 346 while 349 as soon as 352 until 353 356
since 357

Cause or Reason 359

361

Purpose 363

Place 367

Manner 368

as 368 as if (as though) 369

Result 371

372
o kadar + adjective + noun-time + ki 373 373

Degree 375

Comparative Degree 375

Superlative Degree 377

Positive or Negative Equality 378

379

Wish 380

wish + would 380 wish + past subjunctive 381 wish + past perfect or perfect modal 382

Conditional Sentences 383

Present Real Supposition 383

Present Unreal (contrary to fact) Supposition 386

Past Real Supposition 387

Past Unreal (contrary to fact) Supposition 388

Orders and Requests 390

Plain Orders and Requests 390

Polite Requests 391

Polite Refusals 392

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Offers 392

393
394

So do I (Neither do I) 395

Conjunctions and Transitional Phrases 396

Intensifiers 403

Reported Speech 407

Roots, Stems and Verb Frames 408

Rational Sequencing 410

Morphemic Sequencing 418

The Inflectional Allomorphs Attached to Nouns and Nominal Phrases 418 The Inflectional Allomorphs Attached to Action Vebs 420 Dual Inflectional Allomorphs Attached to Verb Roots, Stems and Frames 421 The Inflectional Allomorphs Attached to "be" (ol) Verbs 422

Modal Auxiliary Verbs 423

Oral Harmonic Sequencing 425

Morphemic and Oral Sequences 428

Symbols and Abbreviations 431

References 432

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LOGICAL, MORPHEMIC, AND ORAL SEQUENCING

Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker in their books assert that the human mind has an inborn logical ability which seperates a body of thought (a sentence) into two parts to produce sentences. A person thinks logically that a sentence should be about something or someone, and uses them as subjects, and uses all the information given about the subjects as predi- cates. Chomsky calls them Nominal Phrase and Verbal Phrase, in short "NP + VP". Additionally, the predicate part (VP) is also seperated into two parts as a verb, and an object 'V + NP'. These logical storages (parts) are empty before one starts learning his/her language. When someone starts hearing the sounds of his language, he loads these sounds with meaning and inserts them into these empty logical storages. The sequencing of the storages is also learned while someone is being exposed to his native language. Therefore the sequencing of the logical storages change from language to language. The logical storages and their learned sequencing are called the logical sequence of a sentence. The so called storages are also flexible enough to hold the shortest and the longest language units.

The word verb "V" covers a verb root, a verb stem, or a verb frame, and all the inflectional suffixes attached to them such as "ed", "ing", "s", and auxiliary verbs such as "must", "may", "might", "can", "could", etc. preceded by them. The verbs together with these inflectional suffixes and auxiliary verbs constitude a verb composition concept and called a verb "V".

All subjects and objects, whether long or short, are Nominal Phrases. If a verb is intransitive, it does not need an object (NP), so the predicate part has only a verb, and some adverbs or adverbials. The predicates that have "be" verbs are also considered Verbal Phrases. The sentences described above are of three kinds:

1. A subject, a transitive verb, and an object: Jack killed a mouse.

subj V obj (NP)

NP VP

2. A subject and an intransitive verb: Jack sleeps.

subj V NP VP

3. A subject and a "be" complement: Jack is brave.

subj V

NP VP

TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

14 Although these logical storages are inborn, their sequencing is learned through the experiences of an individual. Therefore, the sequencing of the subject and predicate, and that of the subject, verb, and object change from language to language. For instance in English: I am coming. Subj (NP) pred (VP) (There are no personal suffixes attached to verbs in English.)

In Turkish: Geliyor um (ge*li*yo*rum)

V subj (NP) In Turkish, a personal concept is expressed by a personal suffix either at- tached to a verb at the end of a sentence, or expressed by both a pronoun in the beginning and a suffix at the end of a sentence. Using personal suffixes attached to the ends of the Turkish sentences (except the third person sin- gular) is a grammatical necessity. Furthermore, the subject, verb, and object sequence of the English lan- guage differs in Turkish as subject (pronoun), object, verb, subject (suffix); or object, verb, subject (suffix):

English: We are picking flowers.

subj (pron) V obj Turkish 1: Biz topuyor-uz. = We are picking flowers. subj (pron) obj V-subj (suffix) Turkish 2: topluyor-uz. = We are picking flowers. obj V-subj (suffix) The reason why there may be two identical alternative sentences in Turkish is that one should compulsorily use a personal suffix attached to the verb in a sentence, but if he wants to emphasize the subject, he could also use a pronoun in the beginning of a sentence as well as a personal suffix repre- senting the pronoun at the end. If we use a sentence without a personal suffix, the sentence becomes un- grammatical although it is understandable: *gidiyor. (ungrammatical) (Ben) r-um. (grammatical) be ignored.) *Ben sen-i seviyor. (ungrammatical) (Ben) sen-i veviyor-um. (grammatical) be ignored.) As a general syllabication rule in Turkish, the single underlined conso- nants of the words or allomorphs detach from their syllables, and attach to the first vowels of the following morphemes as in the examples above. This

TURKISH GRAMMAR ACADEMIC EDITION 2012

15 operation of the oral sequence of the Turkish language reorganizes the morphemic sequence to produce harmonic syllable sequences. The lines put under the consonants are not used in writing. One could estimate that there exist empty inborn logical subject-predicate, and subject-verb-object storages in one's mind ready to be filled with the learned sequences of phonemes and morphemes in a newborn baby. A newborn baby hears the sounds of his/her native language, learns which sounds convey which words and morphemes. He/she also hears the se- quences of subject-predicate, and subject-verb-object, and the syllables of his/her native language. All these sounds and information gather in its memory, and are inserted into the inborn storages to produce sensible sentences. All human beings are born eager to learn. This is an inherent instinct in everybody, which Steven Pinker calls it "Language Instinct". Children do not know what a subject, or an object is, but as soon as they learn the interrogative concepts etc., they start asking questions. In all languages, question words ask for the essential parts

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