Turkish Phonology: the main rules


1. Vowel Harmony

	A vowel unspecified for backness gets its backness
	from the preceding vowel or palatalized C, whichever is nearer.

	A high vowel unspecified for rounding gets its rounding
	from the preceding vowel.

	(In suffixes, high vowels are usually unspecified for
	backness and rounding, while low vowels are usually
	specified -Round and unspecified for backness)

	(Underspecified high vowels are represented by the archiphoneme /I/,
	and underspecified low vowels by the archiphoneme /E/)

2. Final Stop Devoicing

	A syllable-final voiced stop devoices.

3. Suffix-initial Coronal Stop Voicing Assimilation

	A suffix-initial coronal stop assimilates in voicing to the preceding
	segment.

4. Suffix-initial y -> 0

	A suffix-initial /y/ deletes when preceded by a consonant.

5. Suffix-initial V -> 0

	A suffix-initial vowel deletes when preceded by a vowel.

	[I don't really believe this.]

6. Soft G Rule

	g -> G (soft g) between vowels.  Soft G is phonetically null.


There are some morpheme-specific alternations that have to be dealt with by
special rules.  Three of them are:

7. The 3rd person singular possessive suffix has form -I after consonants
   but form -sI after vowels.  This can be treated by giving it the UF /SI/
   and having a rule deleting S after consonants: S -> 0/ C _  (S -> s / V _).

8. The genitive suffix has form -In after consonants
   but form -nIn after vowels.  This can be treated by giving it the UF /NIn/
   and having a rule deleting N after consonants: N -> 0/ C _  (N -> n / V _).

9. The 3.sg.poss suffix, the 3.sg pn 'o', and the demonstratives
   'bu', 'Su', and 'o', and the relational suffix -ki have an /n/ in their
   underlying representation: -(s)I(n), o(n), bu(n), Su(n), -ki(n)
   which appears only when followed immediately by a case suffix.