Reduplication as a word formation method and grammatical marker in Turkic

Abstract

In Turkic which is typologically placed between the agglutinative languages in terms of derivation and inflection system, is known also to use methods other than agglutination in word formation and inflection. Reduplication, one of these, is used functionally in the derivation and inflection categories in many world languages. Reduplication used with the function of word formation in the languages, without ever having to a different morpho-syntactic category, can derive new words with a different meaning than the words that create it. As a grammatical marker, it is notable that it can take some affixes’ place in various inflection categories, especially by acting as a inflectional suffix in the agglutinative languages. When the method of reduplication in Turkic is analyze from a functional perspective, it appears to be used both as a word formation method and an inflection marker in historical and modern Turkic language areas. In this study, the examples of words created by reduplication medhod in various historical and modern Turkic language area were analyzed; It has been attempted to show that the reduplication method is used with the function of word formation in Turkic as well as in some other world languages. In addition, some linguistic units formed by reduplication way were tried to be explained by the grammaticalization theory; It is presented with examples that the reduplication method are used as a inflection element which mark different semantic values with a wide variety of functions such as plurality, sorting-distributive, similarity, limitation, diminutive, graduation, predicate marker in the semantical and morphological categories. © 2017 Hacettepe University 1. All rights reserved.