Turkish Grammar

Book Description

Since its appearance in 1967, Professor Lewis's Turkish Grammar has been the standard work on the language throughout the English-speaking world. This revised and fully updated new edition further reflects the results of the language reform movement which, though not so drastic in its effect on the spoken language, has made anything written before the early 1930s, and a lot since, increasingly obscure to subsequent generations. Incorporating much new material, it presents an authoritative, lucid, and engaging text, setting out every form and construction of pre- and post-reform Turkish that may be encountered in print, as well as colloquial usages. Reviews of the first edition: 'This is by far the most comprehensive Turkish grammar ever published in English [Professor Lewis] guides the student through the delicate labyrinths of the language with sympathetic understanding and what is rare in the grammarian humour The typography and arrangement of the book are beyond all praise, and all in all the book is a most notable achievement.' Royal Central Asian Journal '[The] thinnest chapters of a grammar are sometimes those on syntax; but in this book the discussions of modern Turkish syntax are the strongest sections, illustrated by lucid and penetrating analyses of sentence structure, with no skirting round difficulties or papering over of cracks This book will certainly be instructive and indeed enjoyable reading to every student of Turkish who has already made some progress in the language.' SOAS Bulletin 'Professor Lewis displays both a mastery of Turkish grammar and an understanding of how that grammar can be best presented to English speakers. His style is clear and readable, his overall approach extremely practical.' Middle East Journal

Customer Reviews:

Excellent but not for beginner........2005-09-17

This book is an excellent resource, but not a good introduction to the language for a beginner. I'm glad I bought it, but didn't really start using it until I had been studying Turkish for a while. So, if you are sure you will reach a more advanced level buy it now. If not, it's better to buy introductory books that are concerned with teaching rather than being an encyclopedia of grammar.

Týrkýe ýýrenayý seviyorum!.......2004-07-23

(based on the 1984 reprint edition)

I have been studying Turkish on my own for the past three months and G.L. Lewis?s Turkish Grammar is by far and away the most useful book on the subject I have come across.

My first exposure to the book was when I signed it out from our public library ? and overnight after just glossing through a few sections I felt my understanding of Turkish grammar had doubled compared to what I had learnt in the past couple of months. The layout is such that you can pick things up very quickly.

Turkish Grammar has an excellent layout which allows it to tackle the subject in a quite thorough manner - yet remaining concise with numerous examples with accompanying English translations to prevent the new student from getting buried under a mass of mind-boggling grammatical terminology. The terminology is still there for those who know it ? but not essential knowledge to find one?s way through the book. It is very easy to look up and locate specific details and find a quick answer to any questions or concerns.

Turkish has a notorious reputation for being a difficult language ? where in fact it is so analytical, consistent, regular and logical that (after mastering the basics of Turkish grammar) one has to seriously wonder just how foreigners are able to acquire even a working knowledge of English ? a language overflowing in inconsistencies and irregularity.

My only complaint ? and a minor one, at that ? is that it does examine some of the obscure stuff like the older Ottoman forms imported from Persian and Arabic which have become obsolete or rarely encountered in general daily language since the Atat?rk language reforms in the 1930s. Such material should have just been compiled together and included in a separate reference appendix ? because the general modern student really has no need to know about obsolete Ottoman usages. That all said, but if the book was going to look at the Ottoman language, it would have been interesting to have included for reference the old Arabic script which the Ottomans used. But this complaint is just a minor point and in no way blemishes this outstanding work.

If you only have one book on the Turkish language - this is THE ONE!

THE standard Turkish reference grammar.......2004-05-14

This is the best reference grammar of Turkish currently available, and has for years been the preferred reference of intermediate to advanced English-speaking students of Turkish. (Note: It is not a textbook, but a reference grammer intended to clarify and expand on what one has learned from a textbook or course. Also, it is a traditional grammar, with little of the jargon or theoretical speculation of "modern" linguistics.)

Its strength is the incredible richness of the material it contains, and the way that this material is explained. Lewis clearly loves the Turkish language, and has been collecting material and thinking about it for many years. He thus covers very many constructions that are simply not dealt with at all in other books. Moreover, he writes beautiful (British) English, and has a particular gift for finding an English expression that parallels the Turkish one so closely that the reader both gets and is able to recall the point.

Beginners in Turkish will likely find this book too much at first, but after getting their bearings in the language and looking to learn more, they will find this one a treasure-chest of information that is a pleasure to read.

A godsend if you need a thorough and logical grammar.......2003-02-05

Excellent grammar book! Mr. Lewis' book is supremely logical without being unnaturally systematic. The book covers the breadth of the lanuguage in a thorough yet extraordiarily concise manner. He, on occasion, will grace the reader with a bit of modest humor while remaining pertinent. Obviously an intelligent man who has an impressive grasp of the language and who from this learned perspective is able to break-down and effectively convey the grammar of the Turkish lanugage. The style is not for the faint of heart, but for those who are eager to grasp the scope of the language. Woe that he has not written a grammar for all the languages I have chosen to study.

201 Turkish Verbs: Fully Conjugated in All the Tenses (201 Verbs Series)

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turkish verbs conjugated, hmmm interesting...
If you have learned the rules you don't need this book!
Useful book
Somewhat helpful
Confusing explanations, too few examples

201 Turkish Verbs: Fully Conjugated in All the Tenses (201 Verbs Series)
Talat Sait Halman
Manufacturer: Barron's Educational Series
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Elementary Turkish
Turkish Grammar
Teach Yourself Turkish Complete Course Audiopackage
Langenscheidt New Standard Dictionary: Turkish-English/ English-Turkish
Langenscheidt's Universal Turkish Dictionary: Turkish-English/English-Turkish

ASIN: 0812020340

Book Description

The 201 most commonly used Turkish verbs are transliterated into the Roman alphabet and presented one to a page.

Customer Reviews:

turkish verbs conjugated, hmmm interesting..........2007-01-27

I did not see this book - ever. So what I am writing here??? Well, I am a native speaker of Turkish, so I decided to add some comments here.
I read all the comments and I have to agree that tenses-wise, Turkish is very complicated, because we have many many tenses all are expressing different things (or maybe it seems so, because all can, must, shall etc are embedded in the verb itself when tenses are applied and a conjugated verb is self-sufficient to express a full sentence. eg. I could have done it. Yapabilirdim.) In primary school when we learned the conjugation, our book only had a full page of different tenses for the same verb. And the list was applicable to every Turkish verb with adjustments of the vowel harmony. So if you want to learn Turkish, first step: start with vowel harmony (don't worry if it comes difficult, because even some native speakers find it difficult, just a tip, try to see differences by applying the wrong letter and you will see that it is difficult to pronounce the word with wrong letter.)(though there are some small exceptions, generally Turkish is a very by-the-book language, exceptions exist but either because the origin of the word is foreign or root has changed and vowel harmony applies to the original root) But the exceptions do not apply how the word is conjugated, it is fixed for all. So one is enough to see how it is done, you must know the root of the word and how harmony effects the structure. I know, it is always easier said than done =)) I believe what you would need is a very good and detailed Turkish dictionary (preferably one showing how to understand the root of the words, because if you know the root and how suffixes and prefixes work, you can easily identify the meaning of words and build your vocabulary quickly. And for verbs, better prepare a chart that can easily be seen from your work area and that would be just what you will need to work on your verbs.

If you have learned the rules you don't need this book!.......2005-07-15

The 201/501 Verb Books are great for languages like Russian, Portuguese, French, German, etc., but not for Turkish.I have perused this book several times in stores but have never been foolish enough to buy it. Considering the regularity of Turkish verbs and the simple rules of vowel harmony (which you will have to master anyway, even to speak in the simplest language) anyone who has learned the rules for forming a tense could fill out these tables by him/herself. If you want to increase your vocabulary of verbs you can buy a dictionary (Redhouse and Langenscheidt both have good ones). Let's face it, you're not going to have time to look in this book while conversing with someone in Turkey, so learning the rule for forming the tense and exercising it, is time much better spent.

Useful book.......2003-11-23

Turkish has the wonderful distinction of being one of the few languages I've seen with completely regular verbs, unlike Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Russian, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and most of the world's other major languages that I've seen books on. Japanese and Chinese are the only other ones I know that come close, as the number of irregular verbs can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

It would be interesting to know how many are like this, and perhaps some of the other Uralic languages like Turkish are too. As I said, Japanese is the only other one I know like this, and in fact there are only two irregular verbs in Japanese. Chinese, if I remember right, is also very regular since it doesn't even inflect for person or number, and I suspect the other Han Chinese family languages are similarly regular because of this, but I can't speak for the other tonal languages such as Thai and Vietnamese, but I assume Cantonese and Hakka are very regular too like Mandarin.

I also don't know how the other southeast Asian family languages compare, such as Mon, Khmer (Cambodian), Burmese, or the many other language groups and dialects in southeast Asia such as Hmong in the Mon-Khmer group. The other groups are the Bahnaric group, which includes languages like Sedang and Halang; the Senoic group, which includes Semai and Temiar; Nicorbarese, which includes Trinkat and Bompaka, Munda, which includes Juray and Remo, and the north Munda group, which includes Kork and Sora.

Actually, come to think of it, Arabic is pretty good. It has ten different verb conjugation categories, and once you know those, you're all right. In fact, they're so regular the dictionaries actually refer to them by numbers I-X.

But getting back to this book, as someone noted previously, because the verbs are completely regular, this book could probably have been about 15 pages long. The only other thing to learn is vowel harmony in Turkish, which isn't that difficult and fans of linguistics will recognize this concept from other languages where it occurs, such as in Hungarian, where it's very important. In phonetics, vowel harmony is a type of assimilation which occurs when vowels take on features of contrastive vowels elsewhere in a word or phrase. Once you know how this works, it's very difficult to misspell a word in Turkish, so even that's not really a problem. So overall, a fine book on Turkish verbs despite all the wasted wood pulp. :-)

Somewhat helpful.......2003-08-06

It's not as much help as such lists are for Indo-European languages, but with Turkish you need all the help you can get. I've been working through the Pollards' "Teach Yourself Turkish" (and by the way, to get the tapes for that you have to go to the U.K. Amazon.com) and it was helpful in recognizing strange words that are not glossed and turn out to be unfamilar verb forms that a dictionary would not give you.
The problem is that Turkish is so completely different from French or German in its entire structure that you have to learn completely different concepts. As a simple example a verb is changed to a negative form by putting a syllable in the middle of it. I haven't yet figured the vowel harmony thing. I'm still planning my trip to Turkey for October.

Confusing explanations, too few examples.......2002-12-27

The book describes the tenses, but fails to give enough translated examples of most of them. I frequently had to go to other texts to find out which tense to use. What do the terms "Indefinite past, Necessity, Optative, Conditional" etc mean? I can guess, but I can't be sure. This book might be useful as a spelling aid, because the manner of adding endings to verb roots can be difficult at first, but it leaves the student with almost as many questions as answers. The explanation of vowel harmony is too brief, and lacks sufficient examples. You will need to read about vowel harmony elsewhere,
Also missing are the common idioms which are found on each page of the "501 Verbs" books published by Barrons Educational Series.

The Turkish Turn In Contemporary German Literature: Toward A New Critical Grammar Of Migration (Studies in European Culture and History)

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The Turkish Turn In Contemporary German Literature: Toward A New Critical Grammar Of Migration (Studies in European Culture and History)
Leslie A. Adelson
Manufacturer: Palgrave MacMillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Atlas of a Tropical Germany: Essays on Politics and Culture, 1990-1998 (Texts and Contexts)
Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955-2005 (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism)

ASIN: 1403969132
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This study turns a refreshingly curious eye to complex cultural relations and literary novelties wrought by Turkish migration to Germany. At interpretive and historic crossroads involving dialogue and storytelling, genocide and taboo, and capital and labor in the 1990s, The Turkish Turn illuminates far-reaching imaginative effects that literatures of migration can engender. In critical conversation with Arjun Appadurai, Seyla Benhabib, Homi Bhabha, Rey Chow, Andreas Huyssen, Dominick LaCapra, Doris Sommer, and many others, Adelson probes history and aesthetics as surprisingly twinned indices of national and global transformation at the millennial turn.

Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar (Comprehensive Grammars)

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Excellent, but not for everyone

Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar (Comprehensive Grammars)
Celia Kerslake
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Turkish Grammar
Elementary Turkish
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New Standard Turkish Index (Langenscheidt Compact Dictionaries)

ASIN: 0415114942

Book Description

Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar is a complete reference guide to modern Turkish grammar. Concentrating on the real patterns of use in modern Turkish, it presents a detailed and systematic description of the structure of language at every level - sounds, words and sentences - and will remain the standard reference work for years to come.

Drawing upon a rapidly growing body of scholarly research on Turkish, this well-presented Grammar is a stimulating and up-to-date analysis of the complexities of the language, with full and clear explanations and examples throughout. A detailed index and extensive cross-referencing between numbered subsections also provides readers with easy access to the information they require.

Features include:

detailed treatment of common grammatical structures and parts of speech
extensive use of examples, all with English translations
particular attention to areas of confusion and difficulty
comprehensive glossary of all grammatical terms.

The Grammar is an essential reference source for intermediate and advanced learners and users of Turkish. It is ideal for use in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes of all types.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent, but not for everyone.......2005-07-29

This just-published reference grammar of Turkish is excellent, but it is not for everyone. It will be most useful to advanced students of Turkish who are comfortable with modern linguistic concepts and terminology.

This is the newest and most comprehensive grammar of Turkish available in English, or for that matter in any language, and contains a wealth of insights into the language for foreign learners. It is a rather dry read, though, and will probably not be of much use to those who are still struggling to assimilate basic Turkish grammar.

For beginners, the old "Teach Yourself Turkish" book by Geoffrey Lewis, first published in 1953, is a gem of clear exposition and will likely be the best reference grammar for people first starting out in the language, even though it is arranged as a series of lessons rather than a reference grammar per se. (Later editions of "Teach Yourself Turkish" by other authors will not do the trick; you should search used book sources for the original. It won't bring you to fluency, and some of the vocabulary is a bit outdated, but it will explain the basic grammar more clearly than anything else at the elementary level.) For intermediate learners of Turkish, Lewis' larger "Turkish Grammar" is a marvel of clear exposition that's a joy to read; while probably a bit too demanding for beginners, this is a book that everyone student of Turkish should get if they are even half-serious about attaining reasonable ability in the language. A (traditional) reference grammar rather than a textbook, it explains almost everything in the grammar with great clarity, using many example sentences. This has been the "standard" Turkish grammar used by foreigners studying Turkish for many years, and it retains its value as the best and clearest exposition of the way the language works.

For truly advanced learners of Turkish, "Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar" is a goldmine of insights, but it is quite heavy going. The explanations are very explicit, the examples are very up-to-date, and the two co-authors have addressed a good many aspects that are simply not given much coverage in most books. The section on tense-aspect-modality of verbs, in particular, is an outstanding treatment of a very confusing topic. But much of the book will be "above the heads" of readers who do not already have a fair grasp of Turkish, or who are not prepared to wade through some pretty abstruse verbiage to comprehend the points made. This is not a weakness of the book, but rather a reflection of the authors' approach, which is grounded in modern linguistics.

Two examples:

(from page 169, on the noun phrase): "A noun phrase that is unmarked for number, i.e., whose head does not carry the plural suffix and which does not have a numerical or other quantifying determiner among its modifiers, may be either singular or transnumeral (number-neutral) in meaning. If it has definite status it will have singular meaning, but if it has generic or categorial status it will have transnumeral meaning."

(from page 444, on syntax): "The crucial difference between this strategy for relativizing a non-subject possessor and the one with -(y)An described above in 25.1.1.1 (ii)b is that while the latter permits only non-definite subjects, the use of -DIK/-(y)AcAk allows definite subjects, such as usta `the engineer' in (28), "I" in (29) (expressed by possessive markings on the verb), and kopru "the bridge" in (30)."

Language of this type fills the book, and while it very appropriately describes the phenomena under discussion, it will likely prove very heavy going indeed to people who have not studied linguistics. The Lewis books cited above, however, do not read this way, and thus most learners of Turkish should probably have recourse to them before tackling "Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar".

That said, however, I have to say that this is an excellent book, with many insights into details not covered in other grammars, for readers with the background to benefit from it.

The Acquisition of Aspect and Modality: The Case of Past Reference in Turkish (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics)

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The Acquisition of Aspect and Modality: The Case of Past Reference in Turkish (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics)
Ayhan Aksu-Koç
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521331196

Book Description

Aksu-Koç's empirical research on Turkish children's acquisition of the past tense forms the basis for this original and important contribution to the current debate among psycholinguists on the interrelationship between language and cognitive development. Turkish, in its grammar, makes a clear distinction between direct and indirect experience, separating personal observation of processes from both inference and narrative. This distinction thus provides an ideal method of observing linguistic and neurolinguistic conceptual development. Aksu-Koç exploits this technique to its full advantage in a study conducted across a wide range of ages. The data are meticulously analyzed and the theoretical implications for a neo-Piagetian paradigm are carefully considered.

Advanced English Grammar for Turkish Speakers/Ileri Inglizce Dilbilgisi

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Advanced English Grammar for Turkish Speakers/Ileri Inglizce Dilbilgisi
Ali Bayram
Manufacturer: Milet Publishing Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 9754710090

Arabic Grammars of Turkic: The Arabic Linguistic Model Applied to Foreign Languages & Translation of Abu Hayyan Al-Andalusi's Kitab Al-Idrak Li-Lisan Al-Atrak ... in Semitic Languages and Linguistics)

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Description needed!

Arabic Grammars of Turkic: The Arabic Linguistic Model Applied to Foreign Languages & Translation of Abu Hayyan Al-Andalusi's Kitab Al-Idrak Li-Lisan Al-Atrak ... in Semitic Languages and Linguistics)
Robert Ermers
Manufacturer: Brill Academic Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 9004113061

Customer Reviews:

Description needed!.......2000-07-11

First, an apology for using the review mechanism to ask a question, but ... no description, and no apparent way to email the author directly? Intriguing as the title sounds, it's hard to guess what the book is about! Turkish is clearly highly related to Japanese; besides being a similarly agglutinative language, there are too many compelling parallels to ignore (e.g., { sore-, kore-, ore- } <=> { bura-, sura-, ora- }; { -ka, -mi (please excuse the dot) }. Is this book an attempt to establish a linguistic connection to Turkish? or a way of applying Arabic linguistic methods to an "unrelated" language?

The Bosphorus Papers: Studies in Turkish Grammar, 1996-1999

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The Bosphorus Papers: Studies in Turkish Grammar, 1996-1999
Gerjan Van Schaaik
Manufacturer: Bogazici University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 9755181458

Book Description

The Bosphorus Papers Studies in Turkish Grammar 1996-1999 comprises a series of articles prepared by Gerjan van Schaaik after he came to Istanbul in 1996 to teach at Boðaziçi University. Having worked previously at the Department of Computational Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam, Van Schaaik found on the shores of the Bosphorus an excellent and most inspiring place to work on the structure of Turkish, a field which has always held a great fascination for him. This work follows an earlier publication, Studies in Turkish Grammar. He is currently working on The Noun in Turkish. Its Argument Structure and the Compounding Straitjacket. Other research projects Van Schaaik has been involved in at Boðaziçi University are the construction of a Computerised Corpus of Turkish Texts and A Frequency Count of Turkish Words.

Czech: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars)

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This, the David Short Teach Yourself Czech and the Fronek Dictionary are all you really need...

Czech: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars)
James Naughton
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0415287847

Book Description

Czech: An Essential Grammar is a practical reference guide to the core structures and features of modern Czech.
It presents a fresh and accessible description of the language and sets out the complexities of Czech in short, readable sections. Explanations are clear and free from jargon. Throughout, the emphasis is on Czech as used by native speakers today.
The Grammar is suitable for either independent study or for students in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes of all types.
Features include:
* focus on the morphology and syntax of the language
* clear explanations of grammatical terms
* full use of authentic examples
* detailed contents list and index for easy access to information.
Czech: An Essential Grammar will help you read, speak and write Czech with greater confidence.

Customer Reviews:

This, the David Short Teach Yourself Czech and the Fronek Dictionary are all you really need..........2006-06-26

Really! First, use this work. I know it means seemingly meaningless memorization, but then the Short Teach Yourself Czech will make a lot more sense, and you can concentrate on the colloquial expressions and phrases. Then you can polish off your knowledge with Radio Praha (which has the printed Czech of their articles and sound in RealAudio or Windows Media) and the Fronek dictionary. The Fronek IS hideously expensive, but since you're not gonna find "2,000+ Essential Czech Verbs," you'll find all you need on the irregualr conjugations and declensions there.

Der Einfluss der Zweitsprache (Deutsch) auf die Sprachentwicklung turkischer Gastarbeiterkinder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (European university studies. Series XXI, Linguistics)

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Der Einfluss der Zweitsprache (Deutsch) auf die Sprachentwicklung turkischer Gastarbeiterkinder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (European university studies. Series XXI, Linguistics)
Maksut Sari
Manufacturer: P. Lang
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback

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