26
in Ethnologue, North Azerbaijani is also spoken in Dagestan, the Caspian coast in
the southern Caucasus Mountains and Armenia.
Figure 3: Map of Languages spoken in Azerbaijan. Northern Azerbaijani is
spoken in the light green-coloured (and North Azerbaijani written) territories.
2.5.4. Phonological Properties of Turkish and Azerbaijani
One of the most important phonological differences between Turkish and
Azerbaijani is the existence of open central unrounded vowel æ
in Azerbaijani as
can be seen in the table.
Table 3: Vowel phonemes in Turkish (Zimmer & Orgun, 1999: 155) and
Azerbaijani
27
Consonant phonemes in both languages vary as can be seen in the
following tables. Dental/alveolar consonants between Turkish and Azerbaijani
vary to a great extent that makes the mutual intelligibility difficult for each
interlocutor even if morphologically similar words are utilized in conversation.
As can be seen from table 4 and 5, uvular consonants x and ɣ
exist in
Azerbaijani while there is no equivalent consonant in Turkish.
Table 4: Consonant phonemes in Turkish language
Table 5: Consonant phonemes in Azerbaijani language
28
2.5.5. Morphological Properties of Turkish and Azerbaijani
Turkish and Azerbaijani nouns are not inflected by gender as Turkic
languages are lack of grammatical gender. However, they are inflected by number
and case as Turkic languages are agglutinative languages in common.
Table 6: Case assignments in Turkish and Azerbaijani
Case:
Ending
Example
Meaning
Nominative
Turkish
Ø (none)
ev
house
Azerbaijani
Ø (none)
ev
house
Accusative
Turkish
-(İ)
evi
the house
Azerbaijani
-(İ)
evi
the house
Genitive
Turkish
-(İ)n
evin
the house’s
Azerbaijani
-(İ)n
evin
the house’s
Dative
Turkish
-e
eve
to home
Azerbaijani
-ə
evə
to home
Instrumental
Turkish
-la, -le
evle
with house
Azerbaijani
-la, -lə
evlə
with house
Comutative
Turkish
-la, -le
arkadaşla
with friend
Azerbaijani
-la, -lə
dostla
with friend
Locative
Turkish
-de
evde
at home
Azerbaijani
-də
evdə
at home
29
As presented in table 6, there is no morphological difference regarding the
morphological properties in Turkish and Azerbaijani.
2.5.6. Syntactic properties of Turkish and Azerbaijani
Word order paradigm in Turkish and Azerbaijani, as in all Turkic
languages, is conspicuously similar: SOV. However, Erguvanlı (1984) and
Bozşahin (2003) regarded Turkish as a free word order language and stated that
“all six variations of S, O, V are attested” in Turkish (p. 96). It is probable to
change the word order discourse-functionally to stress the importance of a certain
word or phrase.
Question formation is by far the most distinctive syntactic feauture
between Azerbaijani and Turkish. WH-question formations are identical in both
languages by placing a question word at the vey beginning of declarative
sentences without any change in word order.
Turkish example: Neden buraya geldin?
Why here.DAT come.PAST.2PS
WH(y)- did you come here?
Azerbaijani example: Nədən buraya gəldin?
Why here.DAT come.PAST.2PS
WH(y)- did you come here?
However, yes/no questions are intonationally constructed in Azerbaijani
language while a question particle –m(I) is placed at the end of a declarative or
negative sentence in Turkish.
Turkish example: Sen yatacak mısın?
You.2P.Pronoun go to sleep.FUTURE.Ques-Part.2PSg.
Are you going to sleep?
30
Azerbaijani example: Sən yatırsan?
You.2P.Pronoun go to sleep.PR.2PSg.
Are you going to sleep?
Copular sentences with nomainal complements are constructed “by
suffixing tense and (subject-)agreement morphemes onto the predicate nominal”
(Kornfilt, 1997: 77) in both languages.
Turkish example: (Ben) satıcı - y- ım.
I seller-COP.-1.Sg.
I am a seller.
Azerbaijani example: (Mən) satıcı - y- am.
I seller-COP.-1.Sg.
I am a seller.
After the presentation of the brief history of receptive multilingualism
studies and comparative analysis of Turkish and Azerbaijani, it is quite
worthwhile to hypothesize that the rate of mutual understanding might vary not
only within but also between the branches of Turkic languages concerning the
quintessence of LaRa as a language mode.
2.6. Interjections
Interjection has always been a controversial and neglected linguistic
element concerning its definition, nature and classification in the history of
linguistics even though the earliest Greek grammarians noted its existence (cf.
Ameka, 1992; Wilkins, 1992; Montes, 1999; Cuenca, 2002; Sauciuc, 2004 and
Poggi, 2009). The title of Ameka (1992) indicates the negligence of interjections:
“Interjections: The universal yet neglected part of speech”. The reason for this
negligence is that they have mostly been regarded peripheral to language (cf.
Dostları ilə paylaş: |