The specifics of morphonology as an independent sub-system of a language (on the material of the modern Turkish)

Abstract

The presented article discusses (1) the status for language sub-systems on the material of the modern Turkish language; (2) attempts to define the main structural unit of this sub-system, basing on the material of modern Turkic languages; (3) attempts to define the principle variant of morphoneme or morpheme on the mentioned material. Since Indo-European conceptions have been domineering in the Turkic linguistics for a long time, the scientific literature demonstrated some attempts to use these conceptions to study the Eastern, particularly the Turkic, languages, assuming Indo-European ideas about the language structure and its units. The terminology used in this article is based on the concepts developed within the framework of the Prague School and the ideas of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay. The research uses the statistical methods and diachronically based data. This article is an attempt to show the structural differences between the Turkic morphonological language sub-system and a morphonological sub-system of any Indo-European language. Refs 23.

Keywords:

Turkic languages, Ural-Altaic languages, Turkish language, morphonology, morphophonology, phoneme, morphoneme, alternation, morpheme forming, vocalic harmony