/e/ lowering in Turkish

Abstract

Descriptions of the phonological system of Turkish concur that Turkish /e/ is lowered in closed syllables ending in a sonorant consonant. Nevertheless, despite the consensus on the general traits of this lowering process, there is some disagreement about certain aspects of it, and these conflicting claims are generally unsupported by instrumental data. Furthermore, lexical exceptions to the rule exist, but discussions of them are extremely limited. Here we investigate acoustically this vowel lowering process and examine some of its lexical exceptions, focusing on cases of unexpected lowering before /z/ codas. We argue that this lowering process is no longer purely allophonic, and exhibits properties typical of an incipient phonological split, with early signs of phonologization of a marginal /e/ ∼ /æ/ contrast.