Descriptive Grammar of Turkish Kornfilt is the author of
Turkish (1997), a comprehensive overview of the grammatical properties of the Turkish language. This work is renowned for its near-exhaustive survey of the syntactic and morphological systems of Turkish and is considered the major successor to Turkish-language descriptive grammars of G.L. Lewis’
Turkish Grammar (1967) and Robert Underhill's
Turkish Grammar (1976). Her work provided a thorough investigation of the syntactical and morphological properties of Turkish and defining its key typological features and universal characteristics. Her work is a contribution to the
Descriptive Grammars series by the Routledge publishing company. The series overviews a variety of languages through the lens of theoretical and descriptive analyses, using a framework called the Questionnaire as a structural tool for comparing grammars across language types. is her secondary signature work. Continuing in her contributions to
language typology and
comparative grammar, Kornfilt highlights the key linguistic features that make Turkic languages unique. The chapter is a highly cited source of comparative linguistics with regards to Turkish.
“General and Historical Background” Kornfilt provides the background of Turkish and
Turkic languages. She specifies how Turkic languages share similar features, including
vowel harmony,
agglutinative morphology, verb-final
word order, and
nominalised subordinate clauses. She argues that because Turkic languages share these features, it is often difficult to count the total number of completely separate Turkic languages. Additionally, she introduces a controversy about the external genetic relationships of the Turkic family. She describes that while the majority opinion agrees that Turkic languages belong to the overarching
Altaic language family, along with
Mongolian and
Tungusic languages, outlier perspectives claim
Korean,
Japanese, and even
Uralic languages to be Altaic as well. With regards to the geographical groupings of Turkic languages, Kornfilt acknowledges that there is no broad consensus on their classifications. Ultimately, she chooses to classify the Modern Standard Turkish spoken in the Republic of Turkey as part of Anatolian dialect of the
Osman language group, which is part of the larger South-West
Oyuz group of Turkic languages.
“Phonology and Orthography” Kornfilt highlights the
phonological characteristics of Turkish. She begins by remarking on the symmetry of Turkish vowels, as there are four pairs of high and non-high vowels, varying in backness and rounding. She states that non-high vowels can only be round if they are in a word-initial syllable. She argues that the most prominent property of Turkish vowels their adherence to
vowel harmony, as they regularly
assimilate to one another to match according to
backness and
rounding. Kornfilt also explores the
orthographic characteristics of written Turkish. While Turkish adopted the Latin script following the writing reforms of 1928, there are a few changes that the Republic of Turkey made in the characterizations of letters. As Kornfilt describes: "Instead of -i, the sign used for the high back non-round vowel, we find ı, i.e. a dotless i. The difference between the two non-round high vowels is signalled in the same way for capital letters: I . for the front, I for the back, high non-round vowel...Other letters that don’t correspond to the familiar phonetic symbols are the following: c for [j], ç for [č], ş for [š], j for [ž]". Additionally, Kornfilt explores other features of Turkish phonology:
syllable-final oral stop devoicing, the
k/0 alternation,
word-final liquid devoicing,
morpheme-initial voicing assimilation,
vowel harmony,
labial attraction, and
word-final stress. “Morphology” Kornfilt begins by commenting on the highly
agglutinative and
suffixing nature of Turkish. Virtually all morphemes in Turkish carry suffix morphemes and an explicit function. The only
prefixing operation in Turkish is the intensification of adjectives and adverbs, via the
reduplication of the first syllable and the addition of a
consonant: e.g.
beyaz 'white',
bembeyaz 'completely white';
çabuk 'fast',
çarçabuk 'very fast'"[3]. She goes on to survey the most
productive suffixes of Turkish, along with the rules governing their order when combined. More specifically, she surveys: •
plural markers:
-lAr •
possessive suffixes, referred to as "agreement suffixes" because they express the person and number features of their 'possessors' •
case morphemes •
causative affixes:
-lA •
voice suffixes, which are the leftmost productive class of verbal suffixes: •
middle/reflexive:
(-(I)n) •
reciprocals:
(-(I)ş) •
passives:
(-Il/n) •
causatives:
(-DIr/t) •
negation marker:
-mA •
mood markers: •
desideratives:
-sA •
necessitative:
-mAlI •
optative:
-(y)a •
tense markers: •
definite past:
-DI •
reported past:
-mIş •
aorist:
-(A)r •
future:
-(y)AcAK •
present progressive:
-(I)yor •
main participle morphemes:
-(y)An and
-DIK •
converbs, or gerundives: • manner suffixes:
-(y)ArAk •
conjunction adverbials:
-(y)Ip •
time adverb suffix:
-(y)IncA •
gender markers
Government and Binding NP-Movement Kornfilt has also contributed to understanding of the
Government and Binding theory originally proposed by
Chomsky. Kornfilt asserts
CP-transparency, as proposed by
generative theory, in Turkish syntax and refutes the role of
restructuring in constructions that violate
clause-dependent government rules. Specifically, she focuses on
NP-movement of an embedded object to
matrix subject position, a specific kind of construction in Turkish that she notes for its "non-local application of an otherwise local process". claiming that the Turkish examples Kornfilt used are only “an apparent, not a real instance of non-local application of NP-movement”. Kornfilt examines the phenomenon of
scrambling in Turkish grammar. She examines the role that specificity plays in the interactions between scrambling, subscrambling, and
typology of
Case. She also observes the extent to which the
Specificity Effect is an autonomous, independent principle of grammar. She demonstrates that the Specificity Effect is actually a by-product of other syntactic principles, particularly the
Condition on Extraction Domains (CED), which she suggests is itself a by-product of Subajency. Additionally, Kornfilt demonstrates that CED is insufficient in explaining features of Turkish, especially those involving with structural Case. Kornfilt surveys and weighs the popular understandings of scrambling. Namely, she acknowledges two major views about scrambling: according to the first, "scrambling is an instance of Chomsky-adjoining an
XP (
NP,
PP, to a more limited extant also
AP or
ADV) to
VP or to
IP (perhaps also AP)" as an instance of movement to an
A'-position; Kornfilt observes the relationship between
semantic parameters and
morphological constraints in determining the distribution of the
accusative case marker -
(y)I in Turkish. She notes that there are two mainstream understandings of the accusative marker. The first considers the marker as an instance of
Differentiated Object Marking (DOM). The caveat of this perspective is that it assumes that the case suffix marks a
direct object if it is too similar to an "archetypical subject". The second perspective is based on the observation that the accusative marker is closely related to the direct object's
specificity, instead of to the similarity of the direct object to a typical subject. Kornfilt argues that neither of these perspectives give a satisfying explanation for the distribution of the accusative case marker. Alternatively, Kornfilt insists that the suffix explicitly indicates specificity under certain morpho-syntactic conditions, instead of a mere contrast to the subject. This proposal is a more flexible notion of specificity in terms of "referentially anchored indefinite NPs". This ultimately means that the accusative case marker can indicate the
referential property of the direct object, including specificity, according to certain morphological environments in a predictable manner; in other contexts, it is not a reliable indicator of properties like specificity. ==Selected works==