Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi (Dec 2019)
Saltbiçim İşlemleri ve Taban Biçimleme
Abstract
This study concerns itself with separationism (Beard, 1995) in Turkish and the need for separationism in agglutinating languages as well. The study scrutinizes morphomic (cf. Aronoff, 1994) derivations, which are devoid of semantics. In the expression okuyucu ‘reader’, for instance, there is no other (intermediate) meaning than the meaning of the root oku- (read) and the target meaning of okuyucu ‘reader: the doer of reading’. However, the derivative includes one more formal item, -I with the output okuyu-, right before -CI suffixation. In such formations, morphomic operations, which are motivated morphologically and/or categorically, but not semantically, take place. The -I suffixation yielding derivatives like okuyu- as above has been misconceived as a piece of suffixes following it, such as -CI and -lI, i.e. *-ICI. Importantly however, affixations like -I contributes to understanding the nature of morphology: They indicate (i) affixations without meaning, (ii) the existence of preforms, and (iii) morphological base conditions. Morphomic operations, further, challenge iconicity, which cognitive linguistic models, such as van Langendonck (2007), are for when criticizing formal linguistics. Morphomic operations show that grammar cannot depend on purely world concepts.
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