Variation and gradience in non-standard Turkish affix ordering

Abstract

Semantically vacuous affix order variation is a cross-linguistically rare phenomenon that promises to shed light on the principles underlying affix order in general. This paper discusses a case of free affix order in Turkish: if a verb contains more than one TAM morpheme, any or all of them can be followed by an agreement morpheme. I seek to determine which factors influence the acceptability of a given order for a given set of morphemes by collecting new data from 19 native speaker consultants. The results reveal a sharp bifurcation between some orderings that are perceived as categorically grammatical by all speakers and others that result in gradient and variable judgments without any discernible patterns. I discuss these findings 
against the background of previous approaches to affix order variation, highlighting the extent to which analyses are influenced by methodological choices about data collection.