In Turkish, the consonant /h/ is regularly deleted in casual speech, although it is preserved in more formal speech. In (2), we see that /h/ can be deleted when it occurs after a vowel and before a sonorant consonant, or before a fricative.
(2)
Pre-consonantal /h/ deletion
Formal
Informal
a)
V ___ [-syll,+son]
cah.ja
ca:.ja
'steward'
fih.rist
fi:.rist
'index'
Meh.met
Me:.met
'man's name'
b)
V ___ [-son,+cont]
tah.sil
ta:.sil
'education'
kah.ve
ka:.ve
'coffee'
mah.sus
ma:.sus
'special to'
The laryngeal /h/ is not deleted before plosives, the class of [-continuant] obstruents, or oral stops and affricates (even though affricates are [+continuant] as well as [-continuant]). Thus, we find forms like sah.te 'counterfeit' and ah.t͡ʃi 'cook' but not *sa:.te, *a:.t͡ʃi.
Note: Sezer's (1985) generalization is slightly different. Sezer claims that /h/ is deleted in syllable final position when it precedes a [+continuant] consonant or a nasal. We will discuss the role of the syllable later. As for affricates, at the time Sezer was writing, it wasn't standard to treat affricates as segments with the feature contour [-continuant,+continuant], and so his account doesn't and wouldn't be expected to explicitly address the ban on /h/ deletion before affricates from this perspective. We think our generalization is more effective than Sezer's because it does double-duty with nonlengthening /h/ deletion forms to be introducedin a minute.
The effect that we want to highlight in the preceding examples is that in the informal variants (the second column), the vowel before the deleted /h/ is lengthened. One way to see the CL effect is as the result of a sequence of two phonological events, /h/ deletion and the subsequent lengthening of a vowel. Vowel lengthening is often seen as compensating for the loss of /h/, as though the position vacated by the consonant remains in the representation, and seeks a new tenant. This two-stage process is described explicitly by the generalization in (3).
(3)
Compensatory Lengthening with /h/
a.
Stage 1: Pre-consonantal /h/ Deletion. The laryngeal fricative /h/, or [-sonorant, +continuant, +spread glottis], is deleted in the contexts:
i)
V ___ [-syllabic, +sonorant]
ii)
V ___ [-sonorant, +continuant], except before affricates, which are both [+continuant] and [-continuant]
b.
Stage 2: CL. The vowel preceding the /h/ deleted in Stage 1 is lengthened.
The process described in (3) is captured by (4), which combines the /h/ deletion and vowel lengthening stages into a single rule of Pre-consonantal /h/ Deletion.
(4)
Pre-consonantal /h/ Deletion
a.
/Vh/ → V:Ø / ___ C[+sonorant]
b.
/Vh/ → V:Ø / ___ C[-sonorant] and not [-continuant]
It turns out that that /h/ can also be deleted in some cases, again in casual speech, in contexts other than those we have just seen. The examples in (5a) show that /h/ is deleted intervocalically, while those in (5b) illustrate the final context for /h/ deletion: before a vowel and after a voiceless consonant. A crucial difference between these cases and those in (2) is that here, /h/ deletion is not accompanied by vowel lengthening.
(5)
Pre-vocalic /h/ deletion
Formal
Informal
a)
V ___ V
my.hen.dis
my.en.dis
'engineer'
si.hir.baz
si.ir.baz
'magician'
to.hum
to.um
'seed'
b)
[-son,-voi] ___ V
ʃyphe
ʃype
'suspicion'
meʃhur
meʃur
'celebrity'
is.hal
i.sal
'diarrhea'
metʃhul
metʃul
'unknown'
(Note for later that in the (5b) cases, the consonant preceding /h/ in the phonemic representation surfaces as a syllable onset in the surface forms.)
Pre-consonantal /h/ Deletion in (4) produces the right results on a descriptive level in that it correctly derives /h/ deletion and vowel lengthening where it does apply (the (2) examples), but leaves the cases in (5) alone. For the cases of /h/ deletion in (5), we need the independent rule of Laryngeal Deletion in (6). In the structural descriptions in (6).
(6)
Pre-vocalic /h/ Deletion
a.
/h/ → Ø / (i) V ___ V
b.
/h/ → Ø / C[-sonorant,-voice] ___ V
A derivation is a step-by-step demonstration of the effect of rules applied sequentially to phonemic (underlying) representations, or the process of "mapping" phonemic to surface representations. The derivation in (7) shows how the rules in (4) and (6) apply to forms that undergo /h/ deletion. Anticipating the discussion to follow, we will suppose that syllable structure is assigned before the rules in (4) and (6) apply.
