Turkish phonology

In some words, a diphthong in the donor language (e.g. the [aw] in Arabic نَوْبَة [naw.ba(t)]) is replaced by a monophthong (for the example, the [œ] in nöbet [nœ.bet]).

In the isolated case of /o/ in the verbal progressive suffix -i4yor it is immutable, breaking the vowel harmony such as in yürüyor ('[he/she/it] is walking').

[note 3] Some examples illustrating the use of vowel harmony in Turkish with the copula -dir4 ('[he/she/it] is'): Compound words do not undergo vowel harmony in their constituent words as in bugün ('today'; from bu, 'this', and gün, 'day') and başkent ('capital'; from baş, 'prime', and kent, 'city') unless it is specifically derived that way.

In borrowed vocabulary, however, back vowel harmony can be interrupted by the presence of a "front" (i.e. coronal or labial) consonant, and in rarer cases, front vowel harmony can be reversed by the presence of a "back" consonant.

For example, Arabic and French loanwords containing back vowels may nevertheless end in a clear [l] instead of a velarized [ɫ].

Loanwords ending in ⟨at⟩ derived from Arabic tāʼ marbūṭah take front-vowel suffixes: e.g. saat-e ('hour' dat.

[18] There is a tendency to eliminate these exceptional consonantal effects and to apply vowel harmony more regularly, especially for frequent words and those whose foreign origin is not apparent.

[19] For example, the words rahat ('comfort') and sanat ('art') take back-vowel suffixes, even though they derive from Arabic tāʼ marbūṭah.

Turkish only allows complex onsets in a few recent English, French and Italian loanwords, making them CCVC(C)(C), such as Fransa, plan, program, propaganda, strateji, stres, steril and tren.

Although some loanwords add a written vowel in front of them to reflect this breaking of complex onsets (for example the French station was borrowed as istasyon to Turkish), epenthetic vowels in loan words are not usually reflected in spelling.

A phonetic study by Levi (2005) shows that when a word has non-final accent, e.g. banmamak ('not to dip'), the accented syllable is higher in pitch than the following ones; it may also have slightly greater intensity (i.e. be louder) than an unaccented syllable in the same position.

In longer words, such as sinirlenmeyecektiniz ('you would not get angry'), the syllables preceding the accent can also be high pitched.

[21] Although most treatments of Turkish refer to the word-accent as "stress", some scholars consider it a kind of pitch accent.

"[23] An acoustic study, Levi (2005), agrees with this assessment, concluding that though duration and intensity of the accented syllable are significant, the most reliable cue to accent-location is the pitch of the vowel.

[24] In its word-accent, therefore, Turkish "bears a great similarity with other pitch-accent languages such as Japanese, Basque, and Serbo-Croatian".

[27] However, the accent can disappear in certain circumstances; for example, when the word is the second part of a compound, e.g. çoban salatası ('shepherd salad'), from salata, or Litvanya lokantası ('Lithuania(n) restaurant'), from lokanta.

[33] The phrase ondan sonra↑ ('after that,...'), for example, is often pronounced with a rising boundary tone on the last syllable (indicated here by an arrow).

[34] A raised pitch is also used in Turkish to indicate focus (the word containing the important information being conveyed to the listener).

[40] Suffixes meaning 'is' or 'was' added to nouns, adjectives or participles, and which act like a copula, are pre-accenting:[41] Copular suffixes are also pre-accenting when added to the following participles: future (-ecek/-acak), aorist (-er/-ir), and obligation (-meli):[42] Often at the end of a sentence the verb is unaccented, with all the syllables on the same pitch.

[52] gives a pitch track of the following sentence, in which the only tone on the first word is a rising boundary tone on the last syllable -lar:[53] In the second word, eğleniyorlardı, the highest pitch is on the syllable eğ and the accent on the suffix -iyor- almost entirely disappears.

That is, the first noun usually retains its accent, and the second one loses it:[69] The same is true when an adjective or numeral qualifies a noun:[46][70] The same is also true of prepositional phrases:[71] An indefinite object or focussed definite object followed by a positive verb is also accented exactly like a compound, with an accent on the object only, not the verb:[72] Focus also plays a part in the accentuation of subject and verb.