Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,sci.lang
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From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: Is Turkish a new language?
Message-ID: <D4rJ1n.MvJ@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <1995Feb16.012953.15511@Princeton.EDU> <D4Hr7t.MC9@midway.uchicago.edu> <3j0gso$7pu@rouge.usl.edu>
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 13:05:46 GMT
Lines: 57

In article <3j0gso$7pu@rouge.usl.edu> hxs9268@ucs.usl.edu (Sever Hayri) writes:
>In article <D4Hr7t.MC9@midway.uchicago.edu> deb5@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>>I admit that my experience with Turkish is limited, but it doesn't
>>seem very difficult to learn at all.
>
> Following quote is taken from the Tech. Rep. "Spelling Correction
> in Agglutinative Languages," by K. Oflazer \& C. Guzey [...].
>
> "[Turkish] nouns may have about 170 basic different forms, not counting
>  the forms for adverbs, verbs, adjectives, or other nominal forms,
>  generated (sometimes recursively) by derivational suffixes.
>  Hankamer [5], however, reports a much higher number (in the millions)
>  of forms for Turkish nouns and verbs."

So what?  Once you've learnt a few dozen suffixes, you can generate
and recognise any of those millions of forms.  (How easy it is to
learn to do that in real time is a different question.)  In many
other languages you have to learn entire paradigms.

>>Turkish morphology is a snap compared to that of several IE languages,
>>particularly the more heavily inflected ones, like Russian.
>
> Oh really, 
> take this one:
> uygar+la$+tir+ama+yabil+ecek+ler+imiz+den+mis+siniz+cesine.

<slighly puzzled by the sequence _-ama-yabil_>
Let me give it a go:

  `as if you were of those whom we will be able not to be able to civilise'

How did I do?  Mind you, I've never studied Turkish, but I happen to
have some familiarity with its grammar.  I had to look up the root
_uygar_ `civilised' in a dictionary.  The rest I calculated.

>>Plural--Turkish adds -lar [...] or -ler [...]
>
> You are off the point.

I'm afraid you are.  The point is that in Turkish you only need to
memorise one form for each noun, from which all others can be formed
in a way shared by all nouns in the language.  In many inflecting
languages (such as German or Russian) there is no single form
from which you can reconstruct the entire paradigm, so you have
to memorise more than one.

> In terms of the number of suffix and prefix
> you cannot compare the family of Altaic lang. with that of IE lang.

Why not?  (In fact, the part about comparing the number of prefixes
is trivial, since the Altaic languages typically have none of those.)

-- 
`"Na, na ... ah mean, *no wey*, wi aw due respect, ma lady," stammers Joe.'
Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk)    (J Stuart, _Auld Testament Tales_)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,   Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
