Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 12:18:30 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712121718.MAA09081@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Robin Turner Sender: Lojban list From: Robin Turner Subject: Re: Turkish X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2596 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Dec 12 12:18:42 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >Robin Turner wrote: >> Turkish is indeed weird in this respect, using >> repetition of the verb with two different participles e.g. >> >> gel - ip gel- me - diG - i - ni bil- mi- yor - um >> come-PART. come-NEG.-PART.-3dP.SING-ACC. know-NEG.-PROG.- 1stP.SING >> "I don't know if he came." >> >> Tourist brochures or teach-yourself books which say Turkish is easy to >> learn because it is "so regular" are having you on! > Ivan wrote: >It only looks difficult or weird because you are misparsing it. >Your approach isn't exactly malglico, but it's mabla unTurkish. > >Remember that Turkish inflects phrases, not words. Instead of >_[gel-ip] [gelme-dik]-i-ni_ (with intervocalic _k_ > _g`_), try >_[gel-ip gelme]-dik-i-ni_. It's a single nominalisation, except >it's formed from a conjunction of two verbs, and that means using >a non-final form (here an _-ip_-gerund) of the first verb. > .ua Should have thought of that. I must admit I hardly ever look at reference grammars of Turkish and haven't used a textbook since the early days of learning the language (largely because most refgrams and textbooks are so bad) - I usually just pick things up by ear, analyse them, then ask native speakers questions to check my intuitions (a sort of structuralist approach, I suppose). One problem is that IMHO terms like "gerund", "participle" etc. fit Altaic languages about as well as they fit Lojban. I usually call "-ma-" and "-dik-" "verbal nouns" (since they inflect) but I'm not sure what one should call "-ip-" - certainly not a gerund. It's normally a bit like a completive aspect, I think, though this obviously wouldn't fit this particular usage - a case of automorphism, perhaps? I stubbornly maintain that Turkish *is* difficult to learn, especially if your native tongue is not agglutinative. OK, the grammar is mainly just a matter of piling on suffixes, but it stopped being as regular as people make out after Arabic-speaking intellectuals got their hands on it. Even our ex-P.M. Tansu Ciller makes mistakes (e.g. "ihanetlik"). Also I find the pragmatics diabolical, but that's more of a cultural than a linguistic problem. BTW, can you shed any light on Lojbab's "her/bUtUn" question? I'm stumped at the moment - I usually know which is the right one to use, but I sure as hell can't explain why. Anyway, if anyone wants to continue this string, I suggest we do it by individual e-mail, or Lojban-list will get even more cluttered than it already is! Robin Turner Bilkent Universitesi, IDMYO, Ankara, Turkey.