Irregularities in Turkic languages

The volume by Eyüp 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-ïm ~ 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 pü-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.