Like other Transeurasian languages, almost all Turkic languages possess large inventories of converbs expressing manifold relational concepts in the aspectual-modal-temporal domains.

Turkic possesses rich systems of postpositions, free grammatical relators roughly corresponding to English prepositions. They occur as heads of immediately preceding nominals and nominal phrases, forming postpositional phrases together with them and indicating their syntactic and semantic functions. The grammaticalization has led to a reversal of the modificational structure: The syntactic head modifies the dependent, and not vice versa (Johanson 1973; cf. § 26.8). The postpositions express semantic relations in more differentiated ways than is usually possible by means of case markers.

The following survey of Turkic phonology starts with the structure of so-called prime syllables, defined as the leftmost monosyllabic morphological segment of a word. They form monomorphemic stems or parts of polymorphemic stems. They consist of a vowel nucleus (peak), optionally flanked by consonantal margins, i.e. onset and coda.

This chapter contains brief notes on Turkic prosody as complements to phenomena mentioned in preceding chapters, mainly prosodic accent, boundary tones, copied intonational patterns, and quantitative meter in poetry. Other prosodic features such as rhythm and tempo will not be treated.

Turkic hypotheticals, glossed as 〈hyp〉, are imaginative modals that present conceivable situations as seen by the mind’s eye, in the sense of ‘imagine it is the case!’. As such, they can also convey volitional meanings of desire and hope (Johanson 2009: 491). Their functions thus largely overlap with those of voluntatives and optatives (Brockelmann 1954: 224). In this respect, they are similar to old Indo-European modal categories of imagination.

A Turkic nominal phrase is a syntactic group containing two or more words and provided with a nominal head. In the syntactic hierarchy, it is higher than a word and lower than a clause. The formal relationship between the head and its dependent is mostly juxtapositional, without morphological agreement marking within the phrase. In possessor-possessum constructions, however, dependents usually bear genitive suffixes, whereas their heads bear agreement markers. The nominal phrase functions as a single syntactic unit and belongs to the same substitution class as its head. Suffixes attached to the head, e.g. case markers required at the clause level, pertain to the whole phrase. Genuine Turkic nominal phrases are left-branching, with the dependents preceding their heads and with specific rules governing the ordering of the dependents. Older written languages such as Chaghatay and Ottoman display right-branching nominal phrases as combinational syntactic copies from Arabic-Persian. There is still much need for closer studies of the structure of nominal phrases with respect to their semantics and pragmatics, e.g. possession, determination, and reference.

Chapter 2 uses a variety of investigative activities to guide readers through an exploration of the sounds and articulations of the world’s languages and the linguistic rules that govern their appearances. It begins with an overview of the acoustic characteristics of speech sounds, which are then employed in a discussion of the articulation apparatus. Throughout, students are directed to engage in their own investigations with the material via the Discover Activities. Various data from a variety of languages are provided to illustrate different phonological rules, and the techniques linguists use to discover them through analysis. These insights are then transferred to a discussion of transformations and processes that complicate phonological systems.

This chapter begins with an overview of several terms important to a discussion of meaning in language, and introduces the reader to the theory of linguistic relativism and the relationship between language and thought. This section transitions into a review of the extension, reference, and the features that begin to form a comprehensive theory of semantics. With this foundation, students turn to a deeper investigation of formal semantics, including definitions for logical expressions and relationships, and then to a presentation of word sense, and the interactions between various parts of speech in the lexicon. The principle of compositionality is introduced, and it is used to explore several examples of non-compositional language. The end of the chapter ties these concepts to an investigation of pragmatics, including politeness, Gricean Maxims, and implicature.

In Chapter 3, students explore the principles behind morphology and syntax. Students are led through a variety of examples that illustrate a range of morphological phenomena. Discover Activities prompt individual analysis to reinforce salient points. After discussing a few of the ways languages’ morphology blends into their syntax, a full discussion of grammatical functions in the syntactic sense is undertaken. Progressing through question formation, movement, and word order, students then explore natural language examples that illustrate a variety of syntactic and morphological concepts.

Chapter 1 is an introduction to language analysis in the linguistic sense. It establishes the specifications of the scientific approach to language, describes uses and characteristics across different areas, and provides an overview of the domains of linguistics. This includes a review of sounds, including phonetics and phonology; structure, including morphology and syntax; and meaning, including semantics and pragmatics. Through the provision of Discover Activities that provide a scaffold for the investigation of these concepts, readers then become familiar with the analytic techniques that will be emphasized throughout the book. These techniques are finally specified and detailed as part of a broader method of investigation and hypothesis testing.

The final chapter takes a closer look at the intersections between each of the previously covered topics, starting with sounds and structure. Readers make connections between phenomena from different linguistic domains coming together to create interesting consequences in the surface-level representations of a variety of languages. More connections are drawn between other domains, and the chapter transitions into a discussion of the scientific rigor approprate for linguistic investigation. Included in this discussion is a review of various devices used for linguistic research. The chapter concludes with an emphasis on the importance of ethical conduct in all investigations, and the ways a rigorous scientific approach can expose injustice.