Turkish reduplicative adjectives and adverbs

Nese Demir

doi:10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4300

Abstract

This research examines a partial (emphatic) reduplication process in Turkish that forms intensified adjectives/adverbs with one of four linkers m, p, r, and s (e.g., bem.bejaz, ip.iri). This study goes beyond earlier works by investigating the responses of native Turkish speakers to intensifying nonce words without limiting them about the choice of linkers. The results indicate although this reduplication process is influenced by phonology, the selection of linkers is lexically determined in existing Turkish adjectives/adverbs. With nonce words, native speakers appear to adopt secondary strategies that include using a linker copied from the base, omitting a linker, and dissimilation of the linker and the initial consonant of a C-initial base.

Highlights

Turkish is an agglutinating language in which derivations and inflections are predominantly formed by suffixing processes; it has an interesting prefixation phenomenon when it comes to adjectives and adverbs
Findings of this study indicate that partial reduplication in Turkish is a productive process in that the forms produced generally use one of the four linker consonants [p, s. m, r]
Linkers in existing forms in Turkish are likely to be lexicalized but their distribution is influenced by phonology

Summary

Introduction

Turkish is an agglutinating language in which derivations and inflections are predominantly formed by suffixing processes; it has an interesting prefixation phenomenon when it comes to adjectives and adverbs. Intensified adjectives and intensified adverbs are formed through a morpho-semantic process called ‘emphatic partial reduplication,’ where ‘emphatic’ form generally refers to ‘optimally perfect of quality’ (Demircan 1987). The formation of emphatic partial reduplication is realized by creating a reduplicant which is a copy of the first syllable ((C)V) of the base, which is prefixed to the base, and closed with [p], [s], [m], or [r]1 (Kornfilt 1997). With all instances of partial reduplication with V-initial bases, [p] is the linker observed. With C-initial stems, all four of the linker consonants are observed, but [p] is the most common and [r] the least common (i.e., out of 89 attested partially reduplicated C-initial Turkish words, 48 are [p] and 5 are [r]). Reduplicated words reported for Standard Turkish are exemplified, and linkers are in bold

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Conclusion