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TAC ’13 & ’14: Yürükler (Turkish team)

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Murat&S
Diglot
Newbie
Turkey
Joined 4319 days ago

14 posts - 19 votes
Speaks: Turkish*, English
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 57 of 167
03 February 2013 at 4:02am | IP Logged 
sin123ned,

Sorry for the late reply, I'm busy these days and I almost forgot the forum entirely. Meanwhile you said you sent me a PM but unfortunately my inbox looks empty, there isn't anything. Maybe it's a pro account function(I hope not). I'd be happy if you could resend the PM of course if it's not too much trouble for you.

Now, for your question... Wow, that's a very tough one for your first question. I've never thought about it before so I had to investigate it a bit. Now, beware of a very long answer which may not include an actual answer at all!:) And note that there could always be the easier answer that I can give, like saying "it's an exception" which is true btw, but as a native Turkish speaker I know by heart that it's not an actual answer! So let me begin...

Wikipedia doesn't know it, doesn't explain it and tells the easy answer: "it's just an anomalous":

"...The aorist negative and impotential characteristics are given here because they are anomalous. Note, that the "-z" of the aorist negative (-mez) and impotential (-(y)emez) is dropped in the 1st person singular and plural, in order to be able to suffix it. (Aorist negative 1st person singular: -mem..."

"...There is some irregularity in first-person negative and impotential aorists. The full form of the base -mez (or (y)emez) reappears before the interrogative particle mi:

    Gelmem "I do not come" (cf. Gelmez miyim "Do I not come?");
    Gelmeyiz "We do not come" (cf. Gelmez miyiz "Do we not come?")..."



On the internet, it seems that this "z" issue caused perplexity also among the native Turkish speakers. I've encountered some discussions on Turkish forums. But the main judgment is the same as Wikipedia's statement: The -maz/-mez is simply the negative form of the -r and it's just an irregularity.

From another Turkish source:

"Geniş zamanın olumsuzunda diğer kiplerden çok farklı bir durum vardır. Diğer kiplerde aynı ek hem fiilin olumlusuna, hem de olumsuzuna getirilir: Gel-di, Gel-me-di. Geniş zamanda ise ek sadece müsbet fiile getirilmekte ve menfî çekim -maz, -mez ve onun z’sinin düşmesi sonucunda -ma, -me ile yapılmaktadır. Bu çekim şöyledir:

gel-me-m        yaz-ma-m
gel-mez-sin     yaz-maz-sın
gel-mez        yaz-maz
gel-me-y-iz      yaz-ma-y-ız
gel-mez-siniz   yaz-maz-sınız
gel-mez-ler     yaz-maz-lar"


It says roughly:

"There is a different situation in the negative aorists from the other tenses. In other tenses, the suffix is used in both negative and positive forms without any change: Gel-di, Gel-me-di or Yap-mış, yap-ma-mış. In Aorist, the suffix -r is used only in positive forms, in negative forms it uses -maz, -mez and with the dropping of "z" (in the 1st person singular and plural) it uses -ma and me(Gel-me-m, Gel-me-y-iz). The conjugation:

gel-me-m        yaz-ma-m
gel-mez-sin     yaz-maz-sın
gel-mez        yaz-maz
gel-me-y-iz      yaz-ma-y-ız
gel-mez-siniz   yaz-maz-sınız
gel-mez-ler     yaz-maz-lar"



As you notice, this is not explaining the reason either and unfortunately there isn't any clear answer about this subject on the internet, even if there was I couldn't find it in my limited research time.

Although the lack of information on the internet, I had my own theory about the "z" before I did some extra reading which leaded me to somewhat confirm my explanation. First lets look at what I've thought for a possible reason of our "z"!

1) In a nutshell, my theory was that somehow(most likely for the easier pronunciation) the -r transforms into -z and merges with -ma/-me and becomes -maz/-mez.

2) First I pondered about how it would be like if we used -r instead of -z in the negative aorist. For instance, in 2nd person singular; Gelmek--> Gel-me-r-sin (normally Gel-mez-sin), in 3rd person singular; Gel-me-r(normally Gel-mez).

3) Then I wondered about the first person singular. Normally the -z drops in this form and it becomes Gel-me-m. What would it be If we used -r and didn't drop it? It would be; Gel-me-r-im. Bingo!?

4) As a native Turkish speaker I realized that "Gel-me-r-im" might be a lead to the answer! Because "Gel-me-r-im" immediately reminded me Azerbaijani! In Azerbaijani it's not "Gel-me-m", it's "Gel-me-r-em"!
     
5) I got online right away and searched to see how conjugation of aorist is in Azerbaijani. Unfortunately, it was kind of a disappointment.

(Azerbaijani)     (Türkish)

gel-mer-em      gel-me-m
gel-mez-sen     gel-mez-sin
gel-mez        gel-mez
gel-mer-ik       gel-me-y iz
gel-mez-siniz   gel-mez-siniz
gel-mez-ler      gel-mez-ler

As you can see it's almost the same. Only, in contradistinction to Turkish, they don't drop the aorist suffix in the 1st person singular and plural, and they use -r instead of -z.

6) At this point I realized that this subject might be related to the history and evolution of the Turkish language. Not the late language reforms but the older and deeper mutations with the migrations and the change of geographical locations of the Turkish. So there could be other leads in the other Turkic languages. So I looked up for Turkmen language. Lets look at it together...

(Turkmen)     (Türkish)

gel-mer-in      gel-me-m
gel-mer-sin     gel-mez-sin
gel-mez        gel-mez
gel-mer-is      gel-me-yiz
gel-mer-siniz   gel-mez-siniz
gel-mez-ler     gel-mez-ler

I got excited here! As you can see again, in Turkmen, -r is used not only in the 1st person singular and plural as in Azerbaijani but also in the 2nd person singular and plural!!!

7) After I saw a changing of -r to -z in a course of Turkmen to Azerbaijani to Turkish, I thought there could be more usage of -r in the negative aorist in other Turkic languages. But unfortunately I couldn't be able to find much information both because of lack of materials on the internet and lack of my knowledge about other Turkic languages. The only thing I could figure out was that there are also some usage of -y or -s instead of -r or -z in the negative aorist forms in some Turkic languages. (BTW, there are people who use -s instead of -z also in Turkey, though they do it unintentionally, e.g. "Sen gel-mes-sin")

So here at this point I can say it's kind of a pronunciation issue to use -z, -s, or -y instead of the original aorist suffix -r. Turkmen and Azerbaijani uses both -r and -z, some other Turkic languages uses -s and -y, and Turkish only uses -z.

After I've done some extended reading about the Turkic languages, I found that there is a notion about the changings in phonemes amongst the Turkic dialects. Most common differences are about the f-v, f-b, r-z, v-ğ, l-ş changings. Since I'm no expert on any of this subjects I'm just gonna give an example and finish up my post.

In Chuvash language kır means kız(girl) in Turkish (r-z changing). Similarly, there is an interesting distinction between Oghuz Turks and Oghurs. After Oghurs separated from Oghuz Turks, their name became a very subject of the r-z change. From wikipedia; "The name oghur itself is an example of the r/z isogloss, being cognate with oghuz in Common Turkic."

My Conclusion: There may be several things to think about the usage of the -z phoneme instead of the -r in the negative aorist in Turkish.

A) Usage comfort: This maybe the most dominant reason. To distinguish the letters both while listening and speaking, people may find -z easier to use than -r, so they might have changed it to -z. Actually as far as I understand this is not a case for only Turkish. R to Z changing is specifically called "Rhotacism" and it's quite common in a lot of languages.

B) It might be the original rule and be an original irregularity of the original Turkish. In this case the -r in the other Turkic languages would be the exceptions.

C) We can't say that all the Turkic languages or dialects comes from an original Turkic language(eventually they do come from a kind of a base Turkic, but you know what I mean here), so all the different usages of negative aorist in Turkic dialects could be original in their own way rather than being transformed from one into another.

D) Language Reforms: I don't know anything about what was the case in Ottoman Turkish so despite it's unlikely, there could be a change -r to -z in this period of Turkish.

Of course all these things don't change the fact that it's indeed an irregularity but I just tried to find an answer and have an idea about it because I really haven't been asked about this before. I hope I could help even just a bit and not confused your mind. :)

And of course thanks for reading this long and vague post...

PS: It would be much appreciated if someone knows about this subject and instructs us better...

                                   

Edited by Murat&S on 03 February 2013 at 4:22am

4 persons have voted this message useful



hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 5130 days ago

1871 posts - 3642 votes 
Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe

 
 Message 58 of 167
03 February 2013 at 6:04am | IP Logged 
sin123ned wrote:
Murat&S

You are right, this conversation is probably not for this thread, I sent you a private
message, so check your inbox.

As for this thread, I have a question about Turkish.

The conjugation in Aorist uses a "Z", and I don't understand why. Example:

okumam
okumazsın
okumaz
okumayız
okumazsınız
okumazlar

Does anybody know how to explain this ? I would appreciate the help.


I went and looked in my Comprehensive Turkish Grammar book, thinking there might be a
handy explanation. No such luck.

The Manisa Turkish site, however, offer this:
Quote:

Negative Form - Timless Tense

The Negative Wide Tense tense sign is -mez but it has become abraded to -me in the
first person singular and plural (no doubt for reasons of daily usage) - So we must
accept this as an irregularity (or intrinsic historical variability of Turkish.)

Let us take the word - gelmek - to come

First of all we must understand that the that the Verbal Negative Infinitive is -
gelmemek - to not come - on which most of the negative tenses are based. However the
Negative Wide Tense Infinitive is - gelmez - not to come, does not come. This is based
on this infinitive ending with the sign -mez.

The negative tense sign is -z which is added to the negative verb stem -as an example:
gitmemek - not to go, does not go - then adding -z to the verb stem after dropping -
mek we arrive at: gitmez - not to go, does not go - to which the personal endings are
added.

Some Examples of The Simple Present Negative

The Wide Tense Negative Infinitive - gitmez - not to go - Note the changes in First
Persons Plural and Singular
gitmem - I don't go - [NOT gitmezim]
gitmezsin - you don't go
gitmez - he doesn't go
gitmeyiz - we don't go - [NOT gitmeziz]
gitmezsiniz - you don't go
gitmezler - they don't go

Note that the first persons gitmem - I and gitmeyiz - We drop the -z when adding the
personal endings to the negative verb stem, all other persons preserve the -z

I don't know if I knew this on some level and had forgotten it or not, but it might be
helpful to think of it as a negative form of the infinitive, as Manisa offers in its
explanation.

I think I just learned to think of "mez/maz" as part of a negative conjugation,
regardless.

R.
==

Edited by hrhenry on 03 February 2013 at 6:06am

2 persons have voted this message useful





sin123ned
Triglot
Pro Member
Germany
Joined 4317 days ago

13 posts - 15 votes
Speaks: English, Spanish*, German
Studies: Turkish
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 59 of 167
05 February 2013 at 7:37am | IP Logged 
Thanks Murat&S / Henry / Modus for the replies. This helps a lot. Sorry for the late reply! I didn't even notice there was already a page 8 on this thread. I'm about to study all this information and make notes on my continuity book.

Murat, I am about to re-send the PM.


1 person has voted this message useful



Murat&S
Diglot
Newbie
Turkey
Joined 4319 days ago

14 posts - 19 votes
Speaks: Turkish*, English
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 60 of 167
06 February 2013 at 7:41am | IP Logged 
sin123ned wrote:
Thanks Murat&S / Henry / Modus for the replies. This helps a lot. Sorry for the late reply! I didn't even notice there was already a page 8 on this thread. I'm about to study all this information and make notes on my continuity book.

Murat, I am about to re-send the PM.



You're welcome.

About the PM, unfortunately my inbox is still empty, maybe a moderator of the forum can help us. Meanwhile, I sent you a PM too, I hope at least you can receive it.

Edited by Murat&S on 06 February 2013 at 7:45am

1 person has voted this message useful





sin123ned
Triglot
Pro Member
Germany
Joined 4317 days ago

13 posts - 15 votes
Speaks: English, Spanish*, German
Studies: Turkish
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 61 of 167
06 February 2013 at 10:42am | IP Logged 
Murat&S,

Sorry, no PM here. How can I go about fixing this problem ? Do you or anybody else in this forum know how this works ?
1 person has voted this message useful



Murat&S
Diglot
Newbie
Turkey
Joined 4319 days ago

14 posts - 19 votes
Speaks: Turkish*, English
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 62 of 167
11 February 2013 at 5:37am | IP Logged 
sin123ned wrote:
Murat&S,

Sorry, no PM here. How can I go about fixing this problem ? Do you or anybody else in this forum know how this works ?


Finally I could see your PM in my inbox, that's very good news to begin the morning. Thanks for the PM, it's very detailed and answers my questions, much appreciated.

Edited by Murat&S on 11 February 2013 at 5:37am

1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7156 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 63 of 167
11 February 2013 at 6:29am | IP Logged 
Update for Hungarian, Slovak, Turkish, and Ukrainian
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7156 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 64 of 167
25 February 2013 at 5:40am | IP Logged 
Update for Turkish


1 person has voted this message useful



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