Does Turkish Have Infixes? Why not?

Abstract

Compared to suffixation and prefixation, infixation is an uncommon morphological process in which a bound morpheme is inserted into a base. Most of the grammatical infixes are accepted as false infixes in the literature since they are originally either prefixes or suffixes but they surface as infixes due to some phonological reasons. However, there are also true infixes, which come with language games, disguises and iterative infixing ludlings. In the present study, following Yu (2007), we argue that Turkish has true infixation in iterative ludlings known as Kuş Dili (the Bird Language). Accordingly, we have three basic claims: (i) The true infixes in Turkish has -Vg- pattern not -gV-, contrary to the previous ludling observations. (ii) The iterative infix -Vg- interrupts the base preceding and copying every source vowel from right-to-left not from left-to-right, as opposed to the previous accounts. (iii) The Turkish iterative infixes have a fixed (unchanging) phonological template (NO) in which there is no way of branching. Our -Vg- pattern analysis and templatic account can explain why long vowels are shortened and why the coda consonant is displaced in the copied form. Accordingly, since there is no possibility for branching of the rhyme or nucleus on the infix template, only the vowel content is copied from the source nucleus to the infix, not the vowel length or coda consonant. Note that our -Vg- infixation pattern also finds empirical support from various languages such as Basque and Tagalog, which are also argued to have -VC- infixal pattern in their ludlings. As a result, we argue that the fixed template analysis for Turkish iterative infixes minimizes the cognitive burden since all one can do is limited to the template (no complex operations in the system).