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.
Consonants + Consonant phonemes of Standard Turkish Labial Dental/Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal VelarGlottal Nasal Plosive/affricate ()1 4 ()1 Fricative 3 Approximant ()1 1 ()2Flap 5
In native Turkic words, the velar consonants are palatalized to when adjacent to the front vowels . Similarly, the consonant is realized as a clear or light next to front vowels (including word finally), and as a velarized next to the central and back vowels . These alternations are not indicated orthographically: the same letters , , and are used for both pronunciations. In foreign borrowings and proper nouns, however, these distinct realizations of are contrastive. In particular, and clear are sometimes found in conjunction with the vowels and . This pronunciation can be indicated by adding a circumflex accent over the vowel: e.g. ('infidel'), ('condemned'), ('necessary'), although the use of this diacritic has become increasingly archaic. An example of a minimal pair is ('snow') vs. (with palatalized ) ('profit'). In addition, there is a debatable phoneme, called ('soft g') and written , which only occurs after a vowel. It is sometimes transcribed or . Between back vowels, it may be silent or sound like a bilabial glide. Between front vowels, it is either silent or realized as , depending on the preceding and following vowels. When not between vowels (that is, word finally and before a consonant), it is generally realized as vowel length, lengthening the preceding vowel, or as a slight if preceded by a front vowel. According to , who transcribe this sound as : Word-finally and preconsonantally, it lengthens the preceding vowel. Between front vowels it is an approximant, either front-velar or palatal . Otherwise, intervocalic is phonetically zero (deleted). Before the loss of this sound, Turkish did not allow vowel sequences in native words, and today the letter serves largely to indicate vowel length and vowel sequences where once occurred. Additionally, a word will not epenthesise consonants to separate the final vowel from a suffixed vowel if a was there, like with ('sacrifice'-'of the sacrifice') versus ('mountain'-'of the mountain'). It's debatable whether this proves the existence of the phoneme, or is just an irregularity leftover by its disappearance. The phoneme only occurs in loanwords. is an allophone of before back vowels in many dialects in eastern and southeastern Turkey, including Hatay dialect. /ɾ/ is word-finally [ɾ̞̊]http://ds.anadolu.edu.tr/eKitap/TUR401U.pdf
Phonetic notes:
are bilabial, whereas vary between bilabial and labiodental. Some speakers realize as bilabial when it occurs before the rounded vowels as well as (although to a lesser extent) word-finally after those rounded vowels. In other environments, it is labiodental . The main allophone of is a voiced labiodental fricative . Between two vowels (with at least one of them, usually the following one, being rounded), it is realized as a voiced bilabial approximant , whereas before or after a rounded vowel (but not between vowels), it is realized as a voiced bilabial fricative . Some speakers have only one bilabial allophone. are dental , is velarized dental , is alveolar , whereas is palatalized post-alveolar . is frequently devoiced word-finally and before a voiceless consonant. According to one source, it is only realized as a modal tap intervocalically. Word-initially, a location is restricted from occurring in native words, the constriction at the alveolar ridge narrows sufficiently to create frication but without making full contact, ; the same happens in word-final position: (which can be mistaken for or by non-Turkish speakers). and are often also voiceless in the same environments (word-final and before voiceless consonants). Syllable-initial are usually aspirated. Final may be fronted to a voiceless velar fricative . It may be fronted even further after front vowels, then tending towards a voiceless palatal fricative . are devoiced to word- and morpheme-finally, as well as before a consonant: ('to do, to make') is pronounced . (This is reflected in the orthography, so that it is spelled ). When a vowel is added to nouns ending with postvocalic , it is lenited to (see below); this is also reflected in the orthography.Most monosyllabic words ending in orthographic , such as ('quite'), are phonologically , but nearly all polysyllabic nouns with are phonologically . . Proper nouns ending in , such as , are equally subject to this phonological process but have invariant orthographic rendering.
Consonant assimilation 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 locative of (slope) is (on the slope), but (chef) has locative ; the diminutive of (name) is ('little name'), but ('horse') has diminutive ('little horse').
Vowels
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, , , , , , , , . 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 , laik ). In some words, a diphthong in the donor language (e.g. the in Arabic ) is replaced by a monophthong (for the example, the in nöbet ). In some other words, the diphthong becomes a two-syllable form with a semivocalic in between.
+ Istanbul Turkish vowel phonemes Front Back Close Open
has been variously described as close back , near-close near-back and close central with a near-close allophone () that occurs in the final open syllable of a phrase. are phonetically mid . For simplicity, this article omits the relative diacritic even in phonetic transcription. corresponds to and in other Turkic languages. This sound merger started in the 11th century and finished in early Ottoman era. Most speakers lower to ~ before coda , so that 'somersault' is pronounced . There are a limited number of words, such as 'self' and 'both', which are pronounced with by some people and with by some others. has been variously described as central and back , because of the vowel harmony. For simplicity, this article uses the diacriticless symbol , even in phonetic transcription. is phonologically a back vowel, because it patterns with other back vowels in harmonic processes and the alternation of adjacent consonants (see above). The vowel plays the role as the "front" analog of . (but not ) are lowered to in environments variously described as "final open syllable of a phrase" and "word-final".
+ Example words for vowels Phoneme IPA Orthography English translation 'tongue' 'sun' 'warm' 'aeroplane' 'sound' 'eye' 'branch' 'way'
Vowel harmony
Front Back unrounded rounded unrounded roundedVowels i ü ı u e ö a o Twofold (Simple system) e a Fourfold (Complex system) i ü ı u With some exceptions, native Turkish words follow a system of vowel harmony, meaning that they incorporate either exclusively back vowels () or exclusively front vowels (), as, for example, in the words ('knife') and ('Turkey'). 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.
Grammatical suffixes feature vowel harmony, 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: twofold ():For the terms "twofold" and "fourfold", as well as the superscript notation, see . Lewis later preferred to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" . Backness is preserved, that is, appears following a front vowel and appears following a back vowel. For example, the locative suffix is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de2 is shorthand for this pattern. fourfold (): Both backness and rounding are preserved. For example, the genitive suffix is after unrounded front vowels, after rounded front vowels, after unrounded back vowels, and after rounded back vowels. The notation -in4 can be this pattern's shorthand.
The vowel does not occur in grammatical suffixes. In the isolated case of in the verbal progressive suffix -i4yor it is immutable, breaking the vowel harmony such as in ('[he/she/it] is walking'). stuck because it derived from a former compounding "-i yorı".There are several other compounding auxiliaries in Turkish, such as -i ver-, -a gel-, -a yaz-.
Some examples illustrating the use of vowel harmony in Turkish with the copula -dir4 ('[he/she/it] is'): ('it is Turkey') – with an apostrophe because is a proper noun. ('it is the day') ('it is the door') ('it is the coat').
Compound words do not undergo vowel harmony in their constituent words as in ('today'; from , 'this', and , 'day') and ('capital'; from , 'prime', and , 'city') unless it is specifically derived that way. Vowel harmony does not usually apply to loanword roots and some invariant suffixes, such as and ('while ...-ing'). In the suffix -e2bil ('may' or 'can'), only the first vowel undergoes vowel harmony. The suffix ('belonging to ...') is mostly invariant, except in the words ('today's') ('yesterday's'), and ( 'because that').
There are a few native Turkish words that do not have vowel harmony such as ('mother'). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel as in ('she is a mother'). Also suffixes added to foreign borrowings and proper nouns usually harmonize their vowel with the syllable immediately preceding the suffix: ('in Amsterdam'), ('in Paris').
Consonantal effects In most words, consonants are neutral or transparent and have no effect on vowel harmony. In borrowed vocabulary, however, back vowel harmony can be interrupted by the presence of a "front" (i.e. coronal or labial) consonant, and in rarer cases, front vowel harmony can be reversed by the presence of a "back" consonant.
noun dative case meaning type of l noun dative case meaning type of l situation clear role clear closed market clear G (musicalnote) clear raft dark left dark For example, Arabic and French loanwords containing back vowels may nevertheless end in a clear instead of a velarized . Harmonizing suffixes added to such words contain front vowels.: "" The table above gives some examples.
Arabic loanwords ending in usually take front-vowel suffixes if the origin is kāf, but back-vowel suffixes if the origin is qāf: e.g. ('perception' acc. from idrāk) vs. ('top' acc. from ← fawq). Loanwords ending in derived from Arabic tāʼ marbūṭah take front-vowel suffixes: e.g. ('hour' dat. from sāʿat), ('trip' dat. from siyāḥat). Words ending in derived from the Arabic feminine plural ending -āt or from devoicing of Arabic dāl take the expected back-vowel suffixes: e.g. ('literature' acc. from adabiyyāt), , ('purpose', nom. and acc. from مقصد maqṣad).
Front-vowel suffixes are also used with many Arabic monosyllables containing followed by two consonants, the second of which is a front consonant: e.g. ('letter' acc.), ('war', nom. and acc.). Some combinations of consonants give rise to vowel insertion, and in these cases the epenthetic vowel may also be front vowel: e.g. ('time') and ('time' acc.) from waqt; ('idea') and (acc.) from fikr.