Matthew Robinson's Posts (13)
Sort by
Given a research grant to conduct of linguistic study of Turkish, I would focus upon the (relatively) recent transition from New Ottoman Turkish into what is known as Modern Turkish. This occurred around 1928, with the President of Turkey, Atatürk, promoting a nationalistic agenda advocating a separation from traditional Arabic culture. While this change did not have an impact upon the phonetics of Turkish (with the exception that the Latin alphabet characters showed more clearly what was already being pronounced), it did have a large impact upon word choice and vocabulary. Indeed, the Turkish Language Society (founded 1932) was responsible for replacing many words of Persian or Arabic origin with those of other Turkish dialects. In some instances, new words entirely were created from old stems and roots. Investigating how these old morphemes were combined in such a way as to create new words would be an interesting aspect of my linguistic study.
Another part of my analysis may be the origin of Turkish, particularly its relationship with Arabic and Persian, especially in regard to the language reforms of the 1930’s. During this time, Atatürk and his associates advocated for the Sun-Language Theory, a historically inaccurate theory asserting that Turkish is the mother of all languages. This theory was used as an excuse to retain some of the words and phrases in Turkish (like “Merhaba”) for which it might be difficult to find a non-Arabic replacement. While the Sun-Theory is inaccurate, it will still be worthwhile to investigate the similarities in morphemes between Turkish and other languages, as well as how these shared morphemes have changed phonetically over time.
While I have not yet started writing in Turkish, I am very grateful that Modern Turkish has transitioned to the use of the Latin alphabet. While this makes some words slightly unwieldy, it makes both typing and writing extremely easy. I believe writing would be especially simple, as many of the letters are the exact same as in English, and those that are different are just variations of English letters (with umlauts or other accent markings). However, if I wanted to type in Turkish I would have to become accustomed to another keyboard layout to include the different letters.
Forming sentences with Turkish, however, is much more difficult. Because Turkish is agglutinative, meaning a single word can express multiple ideas through the addition of morphemes onto that word, both creating the words themselves and then combining them into sentences can be challenging to a new speaker. The basic Turkish word order is subject, object, and then verb, with suffixes added on to the nouns and verbs to express who is doing things to verbs or who is owning a noun. For example, in Turkish, “Iyi” means “good” and “Iyiyim” means “I’m fine”. The added “-im” indicates ownership of the “good”, translating to “I am well”. Because in English, all parts of speech are separate (even when one typical part of speech is being used as another in the case of participles and gerunds), assigning a specific suffix that indicates a part of speech to a noun or verb in Turkish can seem strange and may hinder the ability to communicate in written contexts.
Clauses in Turkish are much different than in English. For example, whereas in English the tense of the verb can change inside a clause, in Turkish the verb always stays the same. If I wanted to say, “I see the man who is running”, the verb in that sentence is “koşan” meaning literally “who is run”. The complete sentence would be “Koşan adamı görüyorum”. However, if I wanted to say, “I will see the man who will run”, in Turkish, this is “Koşan adamı göreceğim”. The relative verb “koşan” stays the same, and an ending is added to the main verb in the sentence to indicative future tense for both verbs. The same occurs for the past tense. “I saw the man who ran” becomes “Koşan adamı gördüm”, with “koşan” once again staying constant as “who is run”.
The extinction of a language occurs when that language is no longer spoken by individuals (however few) on this planet. An example of this was referenced in the reading, as at one point Siletz Dee-ni had only five speakers remaining, and each of these speakers only knew Siletz as a secondary language. While to some extent, documentation, such as digital collections and dictionaries, can preserve a language and provide the opportunity for others to learn such a language, if nobody speaks or learns to speak a language, this language becomes extinct, with the documentation only serving as a memorial to that language. Yet this documentation can also be the key to this language's resurrection, much in the same way that the Siletz Dee-ni online dictionary has resurrected a nearly-extinct language throughout many parts of the US.
When a language dies, all the rich knowledge accompanying that language is lost to humanity. With over 7000 languages throughout the world (and half destined to die within a century), it becomes imperative that such languages are documented and preserved. These languages not only provide rich linguistic knowledge, but also scientific knowledge as well. While almost 80% of the world's wildlife has not yet been "discovered" by the western world, many near-dead languages have superior knowledge of these "undiscovered" species. To allow such languages to die would decrease the collective knowledge of the world, causing us to take a metaphorical step backwards for the sake of "westernization".
David Harrison spoke about the efforts to preserve languages, ranging from creating online dictionaries to recording current speakers to spending time living with a culture in order to acquire their language from the ground up (as Harrison himself did). These are all efforts to document an entire language, and while somewhat effective, will take manpower that linguists currently do not possess to save many of the currently dying languages. Thus, at the end of his interview, Harrison gives a call to action, stating that he is always hiring linguists for this sort of work.
While I am currently not learning Turkish, the discussion posed in class about each individual’s learning plans illuminated some of the aspects of my own learning plan that may not work very well in practice. Many students mentioned how parceling out specific times for specific activities can be detrimental to the flow of a conversation or learning opportunity. I do not do this in my learning plan, but I do limit my learning to specific topics, with a new topic being introduced along a regular time frame. I feel that in order to create a more organic discussion-based learning opportunity (especially when learning with a language-learning mentor), these topics can act more as guidelines or preparation for a discussion. For example, if I prepare by learning vocabulary on a certain topic, it is very likely I will want to speak about that topic. However, if the conversation is naturally steered into another direction, this discussion is still very useful to my pursuit of Turkish. Another thing I learned from current Turkish language learners is that their language-learning mentor allows them to make mistakes, and then, instead of correcting them, tries to have them identify and fix those mistakes. While I am unable to make a claim about Turkish culture in general (it is dangerous to make one person representative of a whole culture), it seems this may be evidence that the language-learning mentor (Mervé ?) places some value in independence (allowing one to solve his/her own problems).
It seems possible—and potentially harmful towards later language learning—that the main aspect of communicative competence that I will be learning is only linguistic competence. While this will provide some benefit in that I know vocabulary and methods of connecting that vocabulary into sentences and phrases, this will not be enough to provide me with communicative competence, as I am missing out on the sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse competences that are encompassed within communicative competence. While to a small extent, language can be separated from culture (as seen by someone exhibiting purely linguistic competence), obviously one cannot communicate effectively without some cultural knowledge as well (whether this be idioms, patterns of speech, or even when to speak or tone of voice). Luckily, my learning plan seems to deal a little bit with these other aspects of communicative competence, including strategic competence, as I aim to reduce any communication breakdown errors by learning how to ask what certain words mean as well as how to say a certain word in the target language. While I will be addressing discourse competence by speaking weekly with a language mentor, I feel I should add a writing aspect to my learning plan so that I become more comfortable portraying coherent thoughts both orally and through writing. Sociolinguistic competence seems the most challenging of all the competences, and I feel I will only gradually learn this by asking questions of my language learning mentor as well as observing her own speaking interactions with others. Of course, the best way to gain sociolinguistic competence (as well as communicative competence in general) would probably be to go abroad.
Turkish is the main member of the Turkic language family, which itself is subfamily of the Ural-Altaic language family. Throughout history, the Anatolian peninsula has been a crossroads for the intersection of empires and cultures. Due to the prominence of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish (or a Turkic language) is still spoken today (although commonly not as a national language) in many of the areas previously governed by the Ottoman Turks. However, besides in Turkey, Turkish is also the (co)official language in Cyprus. Modern Turkish is a descendent of Ottoman Turkish, which itself developed from the Old Anatolian Turkish introduced to Anatolia by the Seljuk Turks shortly before the 12th century AD. Around this time, Turkish absorbed a great number of Arabic and Persian words. Indeed, until 1928, Turkish was written in the Arabic script.
Modern Turkey (the country) was founded in 1923. Along with its founding came the motivation (stemming mostly from Kemal Atatürk, the founder) to westernize. In 1928, the Turkish republican government replaced the Arabic script with the Latin alphabet. This transformed Turkish, purging many of the foreign elements from the language and creating a “new literary language”. However, there are still many indications of the past relationship between Turkish and Arabic. Around 30% of the Turkish vocabulary is composed of Arabic words written in the Latin Alphabet. For example, in Arabic, the pronunciation to say hello is /mar.ħa.ban/, while in Turkish this is simply “Merhaba”. This occurs frequently throughout the Turkish language and is indicative of the strong past relationship between the two languages, despite Arabic being a Semitic language.
While the realization that Modern Turkish developed mainly in an attempt to westernize, this puts into context many of the challenges facing Turkey today, the most obvious being Turkey’s desire to join the European Union. With the founding of Turkey so relatively recent, national pride is obvious. One example of this is the creation of the Turkish Language Institute in 1932, which not only established basis for “correct” Turkish but also seeks to ensure Turkish as a language develops naturally and free from foreign influences.
Years ago, there was some consternation regarding whether Turkish belonged to a purely Altaic language family, or whether it was in fact in the same family as Hungarian and Finnish. This difficulty stems from the challenge in piecing together a single, mother language from the scattered remnants of the language that exist in out current languages today. From what I gather, linguists have discredited the existence of the Altaic family, opting instead for the Ural-Altaic family. However, within this family, one can differentiate between the Ural languages and the Altaic ones.
One potential research topic that I may focus on is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (also known as the Blue Mosque). The mosque is an ancient piece of Turkish (although at the time it was the Ottoman Empire) history, constructed from 1609-1616 following Ottoman defeat in the Persian War. The interior of the mosque is decorated with hand-painted, exquisite blue tiles and, although a tourist attraction, the site still functions as a mosque today. For the presentation upon this cultural topic, I am considering giving a virtual tour of the Blue Mosque while at the same time detailing commonly used words and phrases around the mosque (remove your shoes, please lower your voice, etc). While this topic is intriguing to me, I worry that it is a much too popular choice and that by using it, I will be in some way taking the easy way out.
Another potential research topic I have been considering is the Turkish National Symphony. Given that I am a musician myself, and I know a Turkish bassist who attended the Turkish Music Conservatory School and now lives in Richmond, I feel like this may be a better (or at least more authentic) choice. I could not only explain the founding of the Turkish National Symphony but I could also explain how Western music has become such an integral part of Turkish culture. I may also try to get into contact with the Turkish bassist I know and attempt to interview them for this project. However, doing so may result in a shift in focus from Turkish Orchestra to Turkish Conservatory (which is much more specific and less likely to be considered a purely cultural topic). One interesting thing to note is that while Turkey itself is a relatively new country (1923), it has a very well established musical presence (especially for Western/classical music). If I end up picking this topic, some of the potential words and phrases I might elaborate on are those related to orchestra (finding your seat, how to ask for the bathroom at intermission, the various instrument sections in the orchestra as well as phrases for indicating tempo or dynamics, round of applause, etc). So far, this seems to be my favored option going forward on the project. However, if I am not able to interview my contact, or find that the Turkish National Symphony is not nearly as interesting as I thought (a very unlikely option) then I may instead move forward with the Blue Mosque.
While Turkish and English have a fairly similar alphabet (plus or minus a few letters), this does not mean the two languages are phonetically similar. This is not to imply that they do not share many similar sounds, as the Turkish letter “ç” is pronounced nearly identical to the “ch” sound in the English word “church” (The phonetic symbol for this sound conveniently also happens to be “ç”). Similarly, the Turkish letter “İ” (phonetically “i”) is pronounced the same as the “ee” sound in the English word “see”. However, the construction of words through the combination of letters is very different between the two languages. In English, consonants can combine to form new sounds. This is not so in Turkish and is one of the reasons for the few extra letters that symbolize sounds that, in English, are generally composed of multiple letters. Secondly, whereas English words contain diphthongs like in “oil” (/ɔɪl/) and “sprain” (/spreɪn/), Turkish words possess no such characteristic and even in loan words such as the French word “station” the vowels are separated so that the word becomes “istasyon” ([,istas’jσn]). Another unique characteristic of Turkish when compared to English is the yumuşak g (looks like “ğ”). This letter, when placed between two vowels in the front of the word, is sounded as [j]. However, when placed behind a vowel or between two vowels further on in a word, the yumuşak g is not pronounced. Instead, it lengthens the vowel. An example of this is the Turkish President’s name: Erdoğan. The phonetic transcription for this name is /ˈɛəɹdoʊˌɑːn/, showing that the yumuşak functions almost as more of a bilabial glide than anything else. As an English speaker, this phonetic characteristic of Turkish will be hard to master, as the closest English has to lengthening vowels sounds is just “oo” or “ee”.
As opposed to in English, Turkish words adhere to the concept of vowel harmony, in which, with very few exceptions, Turkish words incorporate either the front vowels (/e, i, œ, y/) or the back vowels (/a, ɯ, o, u/) but not both. For example, the copula (suffix-verb) “dir” (meaning he/she/it is) becomes “dür”, “dur”, or “dır” depending on the vowels of the word it is attached to. While in theory, this should make determining the pronunciation of a Turkish word easier (as all the words should match types of sounds), in reality, since English does not possess such a characteristic, it will still take much work to master. Listening to and watching Turkish soap operas may be useful in acquiring some listening skills for Turkish vowel harmony, as the somewhat exaggerated speech may assist in letting one recognize the vowel sounds used. Another characteristic of Turkish is the concept of consonant assimilation. This means that, depending on whether the consonant before a suffix is voiced or unvoiced, the suffix matches, becoming either voiced or unvoiced. For example, the suffix “cık” is the diminutive suffix when placed behind a noun. However, “adcık” (meaning little name) has the beginning of the suffix pronounced /s/ while the word “atçık” (meaning little horse) has the beginning of the suffix pronounced /ç/. Finally, an interesting and somewhat relieving characteristic of Turkish is the concept of word accents, in which a single syllable of a word will be stressed. Because English possesses this same characteristic, I am enthusiastic to see if I can recognize where these accents are just from listening to someone speaking. While the pronunciation for vowel harmony and consonant is slightly intimidating, I believe that it will become much easier after I begin to recognize the pattern in how each word is formed, and then pronunciation will have more to do with making a word sound correct (as in all the vowel sounds come from the front or back) than just sounding out what I think is written.
Phonetically, Turkish is not dissimilar from English. The Turkish alphabet is nearly identical to the English one, and only includes a few extra letters, most of which represent sounds already used in the English language. However, the letter ğ is unique when comparing Turkish and English, as it can serve to both lengthen and combine vowel sounds depending upon its position in a word. English has no such mechanism for this. This phonetic similarity with English and Turkish (due to Turkey switching to a Latin-type alphabet in 1928) may indicate a potential ease for learning Turkish, but this is far from the truth. Even just a single level up (to phonology), Turkish and English differ quite distinctly. For example, Turkish words all exhibit a type of vowel harmony, in which all the vowels in a word originate either from the front or the back of the throat. English has no such requirements. As the levels progress higher, the differences only seem to accumulate (Because Turkish is an agglutinative language, meaning endings can be piled up behind the root of a word to produce different meaning, it is syntactically very different from English).
It seems like the basic levels of language demonstrated in Aitchison's diagram (phonetics up to semantics) can all be learned by book (or at least separate from the culture or country of origin for the language). However, the levels including and above pragmatism seem to require one to be in the presence of the native culture, as pragmatics deals with language in ways "which cannot be predicted from linguistic knowledge alone" ( Aitchison 11). Thus, in order to gain a holistic knowledge of a language, it may be necessary to travel and study in the country of that language. This is why I believe many language-learning programs focus on phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics without going any further. I hope to also focus on these four levels of language as I pursue Turkish; I believe if I can perfect these skills (or at least achieve a reasonable level in them), gaining a more holistic view of the language can be achieved through studying abroad.
This week's reading from Figuring Foreigners Out provided insight into the various ways in which cultures can differ. These included to what degree a culture is individualist or collectivist, how a culture communicates non-verbally, whether they view time as monochronic or polychronic, to what extent they feel they have control over their world, and whether they communicate in a direct or indirect manner. Many of these characteristics seem interrelated in some fashion. For example, a collectivist culture which views the individual only in its relation to a group usually communicates more indirectly in order to promote harmony in the group. While these characteristics of cultures are easily understandable, I find the ways in measuring the difference in cultures (shown by the Geert Hofstede Analysis) to be more problematic. Many of ways in measuring cultural differences (such as Masculinity or Uncertainty Avoidance) seem to be symptoms of multiple cultural characteristics rather than a single one and thus seem to create some inconsistency in describing a culture (i.e. China being one of the most masculine cultures on the scaled map could be attributed to a collectivist society or it could be attributed to strong traditional values or even to the one child policy it promoted in the past).
While it seems obvious that language and its use originates in the brain, the specifics of such communication has yet to be elaborated upon. Some brain structures, such as Wernicke's Area (responsible for speech comprehension) and Broca's Area (responsible for speech formation) have been discovered and their purposes found, yet these are only the broad pathways responsible for communication and further specifics have not been elaborated upon. Part of the reason for this is that each individual's brain is unique, and, while similar in structure to other brains, may have a completely different pathway for accomplishing a task than another brain. However, in the future, being able to map these pathways for each individual may facilitate not only faster language learning but also faster learning in general.
Although every brain is unique, the owners of those brains often may think in the same way, especially if they speak the same language. This is because in order to be understood by a large group of people, a language has to in some way shape a person's thoughts. While this linguistic determinism is not explicitly mentioned in the text of the reading, the author does admit the "different languages 'parcel out' the world in different ways". This seems like a tacit admission that the way we speak influences the way we think.
I very much appreciated the distinction between words and lexemes that the author explained. I previously didn't know how to relate a group of words that have the same association/sense and this helped increase my understanding of language. I don't know how yet I can apply this knowledge to my learning of a foreign language, but it was also very helpful to know that I will have to relearn many collocations that may not apply in another language.
