Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on New Trends in Social Sciences
Year: 2023
DOI:
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Plurals in Turkish
Müge Gedik
ABSTRACT:
The plural morphological construction -lAr in Turkish is a naturally productive schema and in addition it is motivated by various semantic relations.
(1) kedi-ler (2) aslan-lar
cat-PL lion-PL
cats lions
This study aims to investigate the properties of the -lAr schema in Turkish within the framework of Construction Morphology (CxM). As an output-oriented theory, I argue CxM enables us to account for the various yet relatable semantics of the schema. CxM is established on the notion that constructions are signs which are conventionalized pairings of form and meaning. Following Booij (2010, 2013, et seq.), I assume our grammar consists of interrelated constructions rather than rules. These constructions are created based on adequate example exposures of the same schema, which reflects the same form and meaning, then resulting in novel outputs. For instance, the -lAr schema can also be observed in constructions that convey slightly different meanings than solely plural.
(3) a. Ozan-lar ev-de yok-muş.
Ozan-PL house-LOC not-EVID
I have been told that Ozan and his family/friend(s) (lit. Ozans) are not at home.
- Neden yeni Tanpınar-lar yetiş-m-iyor?
Why new Tanpınar-PL grow-NEG-PROG
Why are there no new Tanpınars?
In (3a), what is meant by Ozanlar is not more than one Ozan, but Ozan and his family/friend(s). And in (3b), since Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar is an invaluable 20th century author, the expression new Tanpınars indicates new authors as skillful as him. As mentioned above, according to the output-oriented CxM, novel constructions can be made with similar form and meaning pairs. Masini (2019) suggests that CxM is a word-based model and diverges form Word and
Paradigm Morphology (Matthews, 1972; Stump, 1991; Anderson, 1992; McCarthy, 1998) with the analysis where undo means ‘cancel or reverse what is done’ not because a negative prefix is added to a V, rather because there is a semantic relation between verbs do, lock, tie and verbs like undo, unlock, untie.
All in all, I argue that our grammar is composed of a lexical network consisting of constructions. Such a network provides us the ability to explain both most productive and the least productive – even idiosyncratic – lexical schemas.
keywords: Construction Morphology, Inflection, Lexical network, Relational Inheritance, Word-based model