Special features of Turkish

AGGLUTINATION
Turkish comes very close to the 'ideal' of the agglutinating type of language: that is to
say, the structure of the word is composed of a sequence of suffixes, each expressing
a grammatical category, which are added to an unchanging root.
For example, the word ellerimde, 'in my hands', is composed of el 'hand', the root,
-1er, the plural suffix, -im, the possessive suffix of the first person singular, and -de,
the locative suffix meaning 'in'.
VOWEL HARMONY
In the process of agglutination, the most distinctive feature of Turkish is vowel
harmony. The vowels used in the suffixes vary according to the principles of vowel
harmony, which control the sequence of vowels that may occur within the word.
There are two kinds of vowels. These are known as front vowels, which are produced
at the front of the mouth (e, i o, u); and back vowels, which are produced at the back
of the mouth (a, 1, o, u). As a rule, Turkish words can contain only all front or all back
vowels (e.g. torun 'grandchild', toren 'ceremony') and the vowels of suffixes added to
any word vary according to the type of vowel(s) in the root. Thus, el 'hand', eller
'hands*, ellerim 'my hands', ellerime 'to my hands'; but at 'horse', atlar 'horses',
atlanm 'my horses', atlarima 'to my horses'.
WORD ORDER
Languages are also classified in terms of three different types of word order in their
sentence structure. We find in all -languages that sentences contain a subject (S), a
verb (V), and an object (O). In some languages the basic or preferred order of these
elements is (SVO). Many familiar languages, much as French, Spanish and English are
examples. Turkish, on the other hand, like Japanese and Korean, has. as its preferred
order subject-object-verb (SOV). Others such as classical Hebrew and Welsh are (VSO)
languages.
Word order, an important aspect of grammar, has a crucial function in making a
sentence meaningful and intelligible. For example, if we jumble up the words of the
sentence, 'What are you looking for?' to read 'for are looking what you?' then it
becomes totally unintelligible. This is due to the ordering of its words which is
unacceptable according to the laws of English sentence structure. However, there are
cases where the word order is neither very rigidly fixed nor very free but generally
fixed with a very minor degree of freedom, in English for example the common word
order as mentioned above is subject-verb-object, but it is also possible to have objectsubject-verb. The latter is very much less frequent. Moreover, it seems not at all
natural in many sentences. It is most common in a few rather stereotyped sentences
uttered for stylistic purposes, e.g. 'This I must see'.
The SOV type of Turkish word order, on the other hand, is much more flexible than the
SVO order of English. A

Turkish speaker can use the word order to draw attention to both the main topic of the
sentence and the word he particularly wishes to emphasize. This is because the first
word in the sentence indicates the main topic - what the sentence is really all about and the word immediately in front of the verb indicates the word the speaker wants to
stress or emphasize.
For example, take the simple sentence 'Ahmet ate the apple'. As was earlier
explained, the preferred order of words in Turkish is SOV: Ahmet elmay yedi. This
can convey either the simple statement that Ahmet ate the apple, r can
emphasize that Ahmet ate the apple and not the banana. If one varies the word order
to Elmay Ahmet yedi, this would signify that it was Ahmet who ate the apple, and
not someone else. There are however two other word orders which would be perfectly
possible: Elmay yedi Ahmet, or Ahmet yedi elmay. They would probably be used
for reasons of style, or particularly if there is more to come in the same sentence.

RHYTHM
Turkish, like Spanish and French, is a so-called 'syllabletimed' language, as opposed to
English, which is 'stresstimed'. In other words, the overall rhythmic pattern of Turkish
pronunciation is carried out by pronouncing the sequences of syllables, whether
stressed or unstressed, at a steady rate with equal intervals. In English, however, it is
only the stressed syllables that occur at regular intervals of time, and the unstressed
ones are made to fit in:
He-says that he-wants us to-take it a-way.
In Turkish pronunciation, the rhythmic pattern of an equal number of syllables would
be:
A-te-ol-ma-yan-yer-den-du-man-k-maz.
(There's no smoke without fire).
Therefore, the syllable-timing of Turkish may constitute a fundamental difficulty of
pronunciation, which can be overcome only by paying deliberate and systematic
attention to it. The stress-timed speech habit of English will continually interfere in
speaking Turkish and it is probably more worthwhile to pay attention to the syllabletiming of Turkish than to any other pronunciation feature. Even if an acceptable
articulation of each individual vowel and consonant of Turkish has been acquired, a
clear and even an intelligible pronunciation of Turkish will not be achieved so long as
the stress-timing of English is carried over into Turkish.

BEING A SUCCESSFUL LEARNER

Finally, we would like to mention that successful language learners, while trying to
figure out how the language works and find out its structure its grammar,
pronunciation, vocabulary and usage - are impelled by a powerful urge to
communicate, are never inhibited or afraid of making mistakes, and are good guessers

and risk-takers. They know that language is for communication and use, and that it is
not sufficient to pay attention only to the grammar. Above all, they understand that it
is impossible to learn a language without regular, frequent and persistent practice.