Musa Salan1, Osman Kabadayı2

1Bartın Üniversitesi Çağdaş Türk Lehçeleri ve Edebiyatları Bölümü
2Kırşehir Ah iEvran Üniversitesi Türk Dili Bölümü

Keywords: word-initial vowel deletion, onset vowel deletion, vowel elision, aphaeresis, aphesis.

Abstract

Having being a rare phonological phenomenon, word-initial vowel deletion has been deprived of attention in Turkish Turkology literature as well as outside Turkey. The first significant work to peruse the phenomenon along with a large number of instances elicited from early and modern Turkic languages is the paper of Vahit Türk, which was published in 2003.The paper, however,lacks earlierliterature concerning the phenomenon. Because of this omission we felt ourselves obliged to complete this shortcoming. Our paper aims to gather all views, absent in Türk (2003), regarding the phenomenon and to present examples of the phenomenon in modern Turkic languages. In addition, we put forward our observations on word-initial vowel deletion mechanism or tendency. This paper is considered to complete the work of Türk and contribute to the phenomenon in Turkology literature.