Turkic lexicon

Some notes on how to go about making a Turkic lexicon for use in Apertium.

Layout

General points:

• The lexicon will be made in one file, it will have the suffix .lexc
• The file will be laid out in the following order:
  1. The multicharacter symbols
  2. The Root lexicon, pointing to the stem lexicons
  3. The morphotactics (continuation lexica)
  4. The stem lexicons

Multicharacter symbols

Morphological categories must be encased in < and > tags. They may contain the letters a-z and numbers 0-9. In extreme cases they may include the letters A-Z They must begin with a letter, they may not begin with a number.

Examples:

• %<n%> Noun
• %<p3%> Third person
• %<evid%> Evidential

For information on archiphonemes, see the corresponding page.

The list of symbols should be laid out in the following order:

• The major parts of speech
• The morphological categories
• Archiphonemes
• Other symbols, e.g. Morpheme boundary, ' ', '-' etc.

Every symbol should have a comment. The comments should line up.

Morphotactics

Naming continuation lexica

• Continuation lexica will be named in upper case, and may contain letters, numbers and the symbol -.
  • Examples: LEXICON N1, LEXICON DET-DEM, LEXICON ADV

What sorts of distinctions to make

TODO: TV vs. IV, Russian vs. non-Russian in Chuvash

Stem lexicons

TODO: Why stems go in lexicon and not infinitives

Lines in the stem lexicons should follow the following pattern:

• Left side (lexical form)
• Colon :
• Right side (surface form)
• Space
• Continuation lexicon
• Space
• Semicolon ;
• Space
• Exclamation mark
• Open quote "
• Gloss (optional)
• Close quote "

Example:

кӗнеке:кӗнек N2 ; ! "llibre, книга"

Morphophonology

TODO: px3 is sIn (and why)

Categorisation

Nominals

Compound Nouns

TODO: N-N compounds with <px3>

Adjectives

• A1: adjectives that can be both substantivised and adverbialised;
  • All three readings (<adj>, <adj.subst> and <adj.advl>)
  • have comparison levels.
• A2: derived/not fully lexicalised adjectives without adverbial reading
  • <adj> and <adj.subst> readings
  • have comparison levels.
• A3: derived/not fully lexicalised adjectives without adverbial reading
  • so-called "predicatives" (бар, жоқ)
  • no comparison levels at all.
• A4: "pure" adjectives
  • no adverbial and substantive readings,
  • no comparison levels;

Examples by language

Chuvash

Type	Example	Reading	Phrase
A1	лайӑх "good"	<adj>	Ку лайӑх кĕнеке.
	лайӑхтарах	<adj><comp>	Ку лайӑхтарахчĕ.
	лайӑх	<adj><advl>	Вӑл лайӑх ишет.
	лайӑххисем	<adj><subst><pl>
A2	кӑвак "blue"	<adj>
	кӑвакрах	<adj><comp>
	*кӑвак	<adj><advl>
	кӑвак	<adj><subst><pl>
A3	вилĕ "dead"	<adj>
	*вилĕрех, *вилĕтерех	<adj><comp>
	*вилĕ	<adj><advl>
	вилĕ	<adj><subst><pl>
A4	тĕп "main"	<adj>
	*тĕпрех, *тĕптерех	<adj><comp>	—
	*тĕп	<adj><advl>	—
	*тĕп	<adj><subst>	—

Postpositions

TODO: "postpositions" which take poss./case are nouns

Non-finite verbs

This section outlines what categories of non-finite verb forms exist in Turkic, and how to identify the type of category created by a given affix.

Verbal nouns / gerunds

Verbal nouns are forms of verbs that allow one to use a verb phrase as a noun phrase. An example in English might be "running" in the sentence "I like running", or "eating beshbarmaq with my hands" in "I believe in eating beshbarmaq with my hands". The former sentence in Kazakh would be:

Мен

мен<prn><nom>

I

жүгіруді

жүгір<v><iv><ger><acc>

running

жақсы

жақсы<adv>

well

көремін

көр<v><tv><aor><p1><sg>

I see

"I like running."

You can also embed subjects, kind of like the English "I saw him/his running home."

Мен

мен<prn><nom>

I

оның

ол<prn><gen>

his

үйге

үй<n><dat>

to home

қарай

қарай<pst>

towards

жүгіретінін

жүгір<v><iv><ger_impf><px3sp><acc>

his running

көрдім

көр<v><tv><ifi><p1><sg>

I saw

"I saw him running home."

This same sentence could also be translated as follows, depending on whether you're focusing on the fact that he was running (previous) or that you saw him run home (following):

Мен

мен<prn><nom>

I

оның

ол<prn><gen>

his

үйге

үй<n><dat>

to home

қарай

қарай<pst>

towards

жүгіргенін

жүгір<v><iv><ger_prf><px3sp><acc>

his running

көрдім

көр<v><tv><ifi><p1><sg>

I saw

"I saw him run home."

As implied by this example, while the tense of gerunds is limited in English, gerunds in most Turkic languages can have a wide range of tense/mood/aspect/evidentiality combinations. Many of these are translated to languages like English as relative clauses, e.g. "I believe that he eats beshbarmaq with his hands.":

Беспармақ

беспармақ<n><acc>

beshbarmaq

қолымен

қол<n><px3sp><inst>

with his hands

жейтініне

же<v><ger_impf><px3sg><dat>

to his eating

сенемін

сен<v><tv><aor><p1><sg>

I believe

I believe that he eats beshbarmaq with his hands."

Notice that in these examples, the verb phrase is being used as a subject, object, adjunct, etc. That is, in Turkic languages, gerunds can take any grammatical role (and morphology) that a noun phrase can take.

Language specific issues

Turkmen: stem-final voiced and voiceless stops

In Turkmen, there are three types of stem-final stops:

• voiced stops
• voiceless stops
• stops that are voiceless syllable finally and voiced intervocalically

TODO: finish description of this and explain how it can be / is dealt with