Prosody in Turkish

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter provides an overview of Turkish prosody, referring to both lower and higher levels of the Prosodic Hierarchy, as well as synthesizing previous research on Turkish stress and prominence. Both regular (word-final) prominence and irregular (non-final) stress are covered, encompassing the well-known cases of both pre-stressing and autostressed suffixes. In addition, novel data are provided, introducing various phenomena, such as the presence of a group of pre-pre-stressing suffixes. In my analysis, there is no algorithm for the Turkish grammar to assign foot structure (i.e. the phonology cannot parse syllables into feet), and regular final ‘stress’ is argued to be intonational prominence falling on the final syllables of Prosodic Words and involves no feet (Özçelik 2017). On the other hand, certain morphemes – those that assign irregular/exceptional stress – come with foot edges in the underlying representation, and are, thus, footed in the surface representation as well, given faithfulness to this information. The grammar (constraint ranking or rules), then, turns these foot edges into well-formed binary feet. Lexical stress, on this account, is thus due to underlying foot edges (following Özçelik 2014), and, crucially, not a result of marking syllables as (exceptionally) accented or having underlying trochees or iambs. The latter half of the chapter then overviews the mechanisms of phrasal and sentential prominence in Turkish, which involve higher levels of the Prosodic Hierarchy and lie at the interface of prosody with syntax. This section additionally presents further evidence for the arguments made here concerning feet (or lack thereof) and lexical stress.