[This is part of a small but growing series of defectivity case studies.]

While there are some languages—like Greek or Russian—in which there are dozens or even hundreds of defective lexemes, in most cases defectivity is markedly constrained, conditioned by both morphological class or status and lexical identity. This is somewhat in conflict with models which view defectivity as essentially “absolute phonotactic ungrammaticality” (e.g., Orgun & Sprouse 1999; henceforth OS), since the generalizations about which items are or are not defective are not primarily phonotactic. A good demonstration of the morphological-lexical nature of defectivity comes from Turkish.

As first reported (to my knowledge) by Itô & Hankamer (1989; henceforth IH) Turkish has just a small number of monosyllabic stems. In verbs, one forms the “simple” (active) imperative using the bare stem: e.g., ye ‘eat!’. However, one cannot form a passive imperative of monosyllabic verbs. For instance, for EAT, we would expect *yen (with -n being the expected allomorph of the passive imperative), but this is apparently ill-formed under the appropriate interpretation, with no obvious alternative.¹ I say it this way because because yen exists as is the simple imperative ‘conquer!’. As IH note, this shows there is nothing phonotactically wrong with the ill-formed passive imperatives. Another example they give is kon ‘alight! (like a bird)’. Apparently, we would expect it to have a passive imperative homophonous with the simple imperative, but it is ill-formed under this interpretation. However, I find these two examples less than convincing since one could imagine that the homophony with another type of imperative might be implicated in these judgments.

Something similar characterizes certain monosyllabic noun stems. Turkish has apparently borrowed the seven solfège syllables do, re, mi, etc. Of these, six are CV monosyllables, which we would expect to select the /-m/ allomorph of the 1sg. poss. suffix. However, these 1sg. poss. forms are apparently ill-formed; e.g., *do-m ‘my do‘, re-m ‘my re‘, *mi-m ‘my mi‘, and so on. However, one can use these with the other declensional suffixes which produce polysyllabic outputs; e.g., 1pl. poss. domuz ‘our do’. The same facts are true for the names of the letters of the (Latin, post-1928) alphabet: e.g., de ‘the letter d’, but *de-m ‘my letter d’, and so on. OS report however that the one CVC solfège syllable, sol, has a well-formed 1sg. poss.; this selects the /-Im/ allomorph (where /I/ is a high vocalic archiphoneme subject to stem-controlled vowel harmony), which gives us the licit 1sg. poss. solüm [solʲym] ‘my sol‘.² The same facts hold of the 2sg. poss. ‘your __’, which for CV monosyllables would be realized as /-n/; e.g., *do-n ‘your do‘.

From the above facts IH and OS conclude there is an exceptionless constraint in Turkish such that monosyllabic derived forms produced by the grammar are ill-formed, with no possible “repair”. However, Selin Alkan (p.c.) draws my attention to at least one CV nominal stem which is well-formed in the 1sg. and 2sg,. poss.: su ‘water. For this stem, a [j] glide is inserted between the vowel and the stem, and the stem selects for the -VC allomorphs of the possessive; e.g., su-y-um ‘my water’, su-y-un ‘their water’. This is surprisingly insofar as OS take pains (p. 195f.) to specifically rule out repair by epenthesis in 1sg. poss. forms!

It would be nice to conclude that the only affected lexemes are transparent borrowings, but this does not seem to accord with the evidence from monosyllabic verbs. But the evidence from native stems is really quite weak, and the generalizations are clearly morphological (i.e., the restriction of the constraint to derived environments) and lexical (i.e., the fact that su has an “escape hatch”), something that has largely been ignored in previous attempts to describe defectivity in Turkish.

To move forward on this topic, it would be nice to know the following. How many, if any,  verbs behave like ye or kon, and are any unexpectedly well-formed in the passive imperative? Are there any other forms in the verbal paradigm that show “monosyllabism” gaps? Similarly, how many (if any) defective nouns are there beyond those already mentioned, and how many behave like su?

[h/t: Selin Alkan]

Endnotes

1. IH note (p. 61, fn. 1) that the passive imperative “are somewhat odd in normal circumstances”. Therefore, they asked their informants to imagine they were directors giving instructions to actors, which apparently helped to render these examples more felicitious.
2. It seems plausible that -m and -n here are purely-phonological allomorphs of /-Im, -In/ respectively, but I am not sure.

References

Itô, J. and Hankamer, J. 1989. Notes on monosyllabism in Turkish. In J. Itô and J. Runner (ed.), Phonology at Santa Cruz, pages 61-69. Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Orgun, C. O. and Sprouse, R. L. 1999. From MPARSE to CONTROL: deriving ungrammaticality. Phonology 16:191-224.