The equivalent of junk food for the writer is redundancy, and the job of the editor is to count calories and impose diets.
—Bruce O. Boton
Repetition, Repetitiveness & Redundancy: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Language Use
Most languages, including English and Turkish, share a stylistic convention of preferring varied to repetitive expression. Intuitively, we feel that repetition (as an act of repeating explicitly the same, or almost the same, lexical word or phrase) sounds monotonous and boring. Nevertheless, both languages abound in all kinds of seemingly repetitive and uneconomical lexicalized and idiomatic duplications and reduplications, even though we logically sense that repetitiveness is unnecessary and, therefore, inefficient, preventing us from exchanging as much information as possible. Furthermore, as any student can attest, practice makes perfect, and occasional repetition can only reinforce understanding. In short, human communication, whether in speech or writing, means finding a balance between our conflicting needs and aspirations: that is, between economy and emotion, polite, pragmatic consideration of others and self-service, and ultimately between repetition and variation.
We should, therefore, differentiate between the good repetitions (e.g., emphatic expressive repetitions, pragmatic repetition of the recurrent names and themes for narrative coherence, rhetorical and stylistic repetitions signaling parallelism or contrast); the bad, or stylistically unvaried, repetitiveness (unless it’s needed for consistency or clarity); and the ugly, semantically superfluous, and therefore stylistically clumsy redundancies, including those caused by “padding”, i.e., by adding superfluous expressions in a sentence to make it appear more credible or just longer.
Young writers and even more experienced, published Turkish writers, of both fiction and nonfiction books, are occasionally “guilty” of redundancies—for a number of reasons, including for “padding” (with pleonastic verbal modifiers or excessive enumerations). In a language constrained by its verb-final and head-final structure, such “padding” functions as a mechanism of grammatical delaying. The structure and the history of the Turkish language, specifically the pronoun-dropping nature of Turkish and the stylistic preference in Turkish of the asyndetic-paratactic (conjunction-less coordinative) linking of sentence constitutes, may account for the prevalence of both idiomatic, lexicalized (nonredundant) reduplications and repetitive (redundant) duplications.
Preference for Asyndetic-Paratactic (Juxtaposed) Clause-Linking in Turkish
The canonical imposition of the verb-final word order has contributed to the establishment of the dominant sentence style in Turkish, the periodic sentence. The verb-final word order significantly, and somewhat artificially, restricts the flexibility of Turkish sentences, requiring certain preplanning. To ease the pressure caused by the rigid structure of the periodic sentence, Turkish has developed a strong stylistic preference for building sentences without conjunctions or other connectives, including sentences with pairs or series of parallel items. Linguists refer to such a style of connecting constituents as asyndetic parataxis (i.e., adding without conjunctions).
The constraints imposed by the preplanned syntax and the finalizing effect of the Turkish verb are somewhat balanced off by the general stylistic preference in Turkish for looser, more fluid, non-finalizing linking of constituents by merely placing them next to each other—by juxtaposing them—without using any formal linking device. In rhetoric, such style is defined as asyndetic parataxis (from Greek “placing side by side unconnectedly”), as opposed to syndetic parataxis (from Greek “placing side by side as bound together”), the style of linking constituents with explicitly stated conjunctions, which is generally preferred in English.
By withholding, or delaying, the dénouement, periodic sentences can increase tension and generate suspense, which is why literary critics sometimes refer to them as suspensive. However, as a means of delaying the completion of the sentence, the periodic sentence can lend itself to cataloguing and enumerating things, including modifiers of the core constituents, which may quickly become excessive and redundant.
Conjunctions are not “native” to Turkish, and the genuinely Turkish way of connecting items in sentences is by simply placing them side by side. Asyndetic juxtapositions come natural to Turkish speakers and writers. Clauses, phrases, or single words are frequently listed with just a comma marking the boundaries between them, without the nature of the connection being explicitly indicated. Despite the common (mis)understanding of the comma as an additive device, in Turkish it can convey a range of connections, including “and”, “or”, “then”, “but”, “therefore, “so”, “whether … or”, or “neither … nor”. Moreover, some juxtaposed items appears without anything between them in special idiomatic constructions called binômes or binomials.
Implicit in the Turkish preference for the asyndetic-paratactic style of linking constituents is the penchant for enumerating, listing, itemizing, and cataloging things.
In English, the lack of any conjunction between listed attributes is stylistically marked, signaling looser, non-final listings and enumerations. Asyndetic coordination is commonly used with descriptive modifiers, specifically, those found in the attributive position (before nouns) rather than in the predicative position (after the verbs be, seem, etc.). Here is the striking opening sentence from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, illustrating the asyndetic use of attributive modifiers:
It was a [queer, sultry] summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
On the other hand, asyndetically connected predicatives in English are never strongly coordinative, conveying the sense of an afterthought as in a resumptive (or summative, or reformulating) appositive construction rather than a series of parallel items. As it happens, appositive constructions are easily mistaken for a pair of asyndetically linked items, with the line between those often being blurry, as illustrated below. It's not clear whether the predicatives below are parallel items or resumptive/reformulating appositives:
The noise had been [so loud, so sharp]. He sounded [weary, hurt].
William Golding, The Pyramid Bernard Malamud, The Assistant
Without the conjunction, a descriptive list reflects the non-finalizing, fluid, changing subjectivity of the describer, who is not interested in creating a precise or comprehensive list of attributes. An asyndetic list may appear as if it can go on for as long as the describer wishes to continue.
While in English asyndetic linking has a clear sense of non-finality, this is not the case in Turkish. A listing in Turkish may remain asyndetic in any situation, regardless of whether the count of the listed items has been established to be precise or not:
Hüseyin Nazmi: “[Gazeteleri, kâğıtları] bırakayım, biraz gezelim,” dedi.
Hüseyin Nazmi said, “Let's leave these newspapers and papers, let's walk around a little.”
Halİt Ziya Uşaklıgil, Mai ve Siyah
Yolda, [yıkılmış bir kulübeye, sönmüş bir ocağa] rast geliyorlar.
On the way, they come across a destroyed hut and an extinguished furnace.
Ahmet Hikmet Müftüoğlu, Çağlayanlar
The structural constraints in flexibility of the canonical Turkish sentence are somewhat balanced off by the general stylistic preference for a looser and more fluid conjunction-less connection of constituents, the style referred to as asyndetic parataxis (coordination without using conjunctions).
Unlike a descriptive list, a pair or series of items in English tends to be syndetically connected. If the list is established to be final and precise, it must have a conjunction connecting the items, whereas in Turkish even precise lists are often asyndetic:
Bazı günler [Nimet, ben] atlarla Pınarbaşıпa giderdik.
Some days, Nimet and I would ride horses to Pınarbaşı.
R. Enis, Kılıcımı Sürüyorum
Yolun [büyüğü, küçüğü] yoktur.
There’s no path great or small.
Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar, Huzur
In rare instances, syndetic connections in Turkish may be reflected asyndetically in English, mainly due to the occasional discrepancy in interpreting paratactic and hypotactic attributive modifiers, as in the example below, the paratactic uzun ve siyah kirpikler is translated into English as the hypotactic long black eyelashes:
[[[Uzun ve siyah] kirpiklerinin] altında o mağrur tebessümü muhafazaya çalışan kederli gözleri] [[delikanlının üstünde dolaştıkça] onu büsbütün şaşırtıyor] ve [[manasızca etrafına bakınmaya] ve [susmaya]] sevk ediyor]du].
Trying to hide that proud smile under her long black eyelashes, her sad eyes, probing the young man and forcing him to avert his eyes to look around pointlessly while keeping silent, caught him completely off guard.
Sabahattin Ali, Şeytan
The constrained syntax of the Turkish sentence results in the recursive process of embedding of a grammatical structure within another grammatical structure. Such stacking of the same forms results in producing embedded-within-embedded, or self-embedded, structures. Subject to self-embedding are both dependent and independent constructions, including dependent subordinate clauses as well as independent items in a series, with comma used as a common connective, in addition to conjunctions:
[[İhtiyar ve tecrübeli] Çingene karıları] [[bildikleri afsunları] okuyorlar], [[bütün [iyi ve fena] ruhları] [zavallı Atmaca’nın imdadına] çağırıyorlar]dı].
Old and experienced Gypsy women were reciting the incantations they knew, calling all the good and evil spirits to help poor Atmaca.
Sabahattin Ali, “Değirmen”
Asyndetic parataxis can be combined with syndetic parataxis, through the use of the coordinating conjunction ve, when there is a danger of confusion, especially with stacked or embedded parallel items. Besides, based on my observations, the use of ve is more frequent in formal, official writing.
Different series may also be stacked next to each other, adjacent at the shared boundary, with only a comma marking it. The only way to distinguish between the items of the stacked series is the difference in their morphology and the punctuation used:
Bir köşede [yeni yıkanmış, ütülenmiş [çarşaflar, gömlekler]] vardı.
In one corner, there were freshly washed and ironed sheets and shirts.
Orhan Pamuk, Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları
In Turkish, regardless of whether the list is final or not, constituents are more often simply placed next to each other, with a comma marking the boundary between them, including between a pair of items—unless the pairing has become lexicalized, or idiomatic, in which case no punctuation between them is used, as it is in the example below, where the reduplicated yavaş yavaş functions as an adverbial:
Bizimle birlikte bu evde oturacak damada babamın saygı duymayıp onu yavaş yavaş ezeceğini elbette ikimiz de biliyorduk.
We both knew, of course, that my father would never respect a son-in-law willing to live here together with us, and would gradually demean and stifle him.
Orhan Pamuk, Benim Adım Kırmızı
A comma separating the duplicated parts turns the expression into a verb:
Orhan tepinerek sevindi de, Şevket hiç ses etmedi. Yukarı merdivenleri çıkarken ikisi de bağıra bağıra arkamdan yetişip, paldır küldür, bir neşeyle itişerek yanımdan geçerlerken: “[Yavaş, yavaş],” dedim ben de kahkahalar atarak.
Orhan jumped up and down with joy though Shevket was silent. But as I walked back upstairs, they both caught up to me, screaming, pushing and shoving by me excitedly. “Be slow, slow down,” I said with a laugh.
Orhan Pamuk, Benim Adım Kırmızı
Lexicalization of Turkish binômes is the ever-ongoing process, and phrases continually appear in and out of the “binomial closet”, with many hanging in between. And so does the punctuation pattern. In the third example below, the comma between yavaş and yavaş may be just a punctuation error, or it may be a signal of pre-lexicalization. In any case, it's wrong and should be removed:
Tam bu sırada, nereden çıktı bilmiyorum. Zeynep Kadını, dimdik karşımda gördüm. Herkese, sert sert bakıyordu. Yavrusunu savunmaya hazırlanmış bir dişi kurt gibiydi. [Yavaş, yavaş] kadınlar, bir iken iki, iki iken beş oldu.
At this point, I don't know where it came from. I saw Zeynep standing straight in front of me. She was looking at everyone sternly. She was like a she-wolf prepared to defend her cub. Gradually, another woman joined in, and then there were five of them.
Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Yaban
The better choice would be no comma between the reduplicated adjectives/adverbs, but an added comma after the reduplicated adverbial, which functions as a sentential discourse connective:
[Yavaş yavaş], kadınlar, bir iken iki, iki iken beş oldu.
As I have previously mentioned, the status of many paired phrases is ambiguous. With a comma, such a phrase turns into a pair of parallel, and often redundant, items. Without a comma, it becomes an idiom, in which case it should be understood as a concept. In some cases, however, a pair of parallel items is not that different from a concept, and the punctuation applied may not matter semantically. For example, below the combined dağları (mountains) and yolları (roads) mean something similar to the separated dağları (mountains) and yolları (roads):
“Emine” demiş, “bahar geçti, yaz geçti; leylekler yerine göçtü! Kış gelip [dağları yolları] kar örtmeden ya sen bana gel, ya ben sana geleyim!”
“Emine!” he said, “Spring has passed, summer has passed; the storks have migrated to their places! Before winter comes and the mountains and roads are covered with snow, either you come to me, or I will come to you!”
Sabahattin Ali, “Hasanboğuldu”
Lexicalized binary pairs can also be found in English, with the telling difference from Turkish, though: English lexicalized pairs must be syndetically connected, with either and or or, while Turkish binary pairs are simply placed next to each other with no other indicator of the connection.
Lexicalized Repetitiveness: Asyndetic-Paratactic Binary Duplications (Binômes/Binomials/İkilemeler)
Both English and Turkish have lexicalized a number of paired, binary nouns, called binômes or binominals (although there are also binary pairs of adjectives and adverbs). Paired nouns are often rhyming, near-rhyming, alliterative, or reduplicative formations.
English has a long tradition of duplicating words, especially if they are Latin/French loanwords used in specialized areas of law and medicine. To prevent misunderstanding (and potentially legal liability), English writers would combine the loanword with its native equivalent, as in aid and abet, betwixt and between, let or hindrance, cease and desist, null and void, suffer and permit, etc.
As you can see, these are necessarily linked with a conjunction. In Turkish, however, the lexicalized binary expressions, ikilemeler, are simply juxtaposed as asyndetic-paratactic reduplicated terms that form a single idiomatic unit. To illustrate the difference between Turkish and English, compare the matching pairs in the table below:
karı koca husband and wife | gece gündüz day and night | aşağı yukarı more or less | tekrar tekrar time and again |
siyah beyaz black and white | ara sıra now and again | iyi kötü for better or worse | bir-iki one or two |
By juxtaposing two words, Turks can create an abstraction, a conceptual unit, whose specific components do not matter separately as much as when they are combined. Together they contribute to the categorical nature of the newly minted unit. This categorical property becomes apparent when the unit functions as a non-case-marked object in a sentence, e.g., ekmek peynir and kâğıt kalem, as shown below in the next two examples:
Öğleyin [ekmek peynir] yedim.
I had some bread and cheese at lunch time.
[Kâğıt kalem] çıkardım ve bir hamlede sanki hiç düşünmeden şunu yazıverdim...
I took out pen and paper, and in one sitting, without having to think, I wrote the following...
Orhan Pamuk, Benim Adım Kırmızı
Two other instances of such conceptualization are somewhat similar. The first one comes from Ahmet Altan’s En Uzun Gece. In a conversation about “honor killings” with a foreign protagonist visiting a Turkish village, who asks why some Turkish men kill their wives, the agha of the village explains using the reduplication kadın kız as a placeholder for any female ward under the man’s care:
“Lâkin [kadınına kızına] dokunulan bir adam, bana sorarsan, [kadınını kızını] değil, önce dokunanı, sonra da kendini vurmalı... O nasıl bir erkek olmalı ki, [kadınına kızına] dokunulduktan sonra, evladına kıydıktan sonra ben bir erim diye başı dik dolaşabilsin?”
“But, if you ask me, if someone has groped a man’s woman or daughter, instead of killing them, he should go and first shoot the groper and then himself... Because what kind of a man are you if you let your women be groped?”
Ahmet Altan, En Uzun Gece
Halikarnas Balıkçısı, in one of his short stories, uses one common reduplication ana baba (parents) and one he may have created, kardeş kız, to mean siblings and children:
Gitmeden önce [ana babaya], [kardeş kızana] “allahaısmarladık” diyerek, onların yüreklerini oynatmayı gereksiz buldu.
He did not want to upset his parents, his siblings and kids and decided to leave without saying goodbye.
Halikarnas Balıkçısı, “Denizin Çağırışı”
👉 The reduplications of synonymic entities or persons imply that individually such entities or persons are not as important as their aggregate, which is why the agha uses the imprecise, and generalizing, notion kadın instead of karı, eş, or hanım (a wife).
When combining binary items, on the other hand, as in the binary expression combining two adjectives (or adverbs) iyi kötü (literally meaning well, badly) in the sentence below, the collective sense of the expression conveys an approximation between its components; that is, something between well and badly is neither well nor badly, or it's somehow:
Eline [kâğıt kalem] alıp bir şeyler döktürebilen, bu döktürdüklerini de başkalarına [iyi kötü] okutabilen kişi, biraz olsun kurtulmuş sayılır bu hastalıktan.
Anyone who can pick up a pen and scribble something down—and somehow manage to convince others to read it—has been cured of this ailment, at least to some degree.
Orhan Pamuk, Kara Kitap
In another creative example, the author has reconceptualized the notion of “reading” as the binary expression A’lar B’ler (A’s and B’s):
Çünkü zaman yıldırım gibi geçiyor, çocuklar büyüyordu. Kız okula başladı, oğlan evde, gazetelerin [A’larını B’lerini] seçmeye.
Because time was passing like lightning, and children were growing up. Their daughter started school, and their son was at home, finding A’s and B’s in the newspapers.
T. Buğra, İbişin Rüyası
Asyndeton, combined with syndeton, can also be found in the names of organizations and organizational departments:
[Konuşma Dili Yazı Dili] İlişkileri ve Derleme Faaliyetleri
[Spoken] and [Written] Language Interactions and Compilation Efforts
Turks love reduplications—to the point of occasional excess and redundancy. Reduplications are so common that the same term may be expressed using several reduplicated expressions. For example, there are several paired terms expressing the same meaning of “approximately”: e.g., aşağı yukarı, şöyle böyle, olsa olsa, topu topu, hemen hemen.
Synonymic and near-synonymic reduplications are often hyperbolic and somewhat repetitive, with some used in negative expressions only: for example, elde avuçta (bir şey kalmadan) (with nothing left), eşi benzeri (olmayan) (unprecedented), saklısı gizlisi (olmayan) (openly), dertsiz tasasız (carefree), eğri büğrü (crooked), yersiz yurtsuz (vagrant), sormak soruşturmak (to ask around), bıkmak usanmak (to be tired of).
Many of the English idiomatic binômes, especially the idiomatic legalisms (for and against, tried and tested, etc.), are regarded excessive and archaic. In contrast, Turkish reduplicated phrases are numerous, being a part of every Turkish speaker's daily lexicon. As such, Turkish paired expressions are in a perpetual state of becoming lexicalized, with new ones emerging regularly.
Binary Oppositions of the Mind & Language, and the Body Rhythms
Judging by how comfortable Turkish language users are applying the asyndetic-paratactic style to connecting elements in sentences, including for duplications that invoke lexical reduplications, it may be reasonable to speculate that a reduplicating/pairing formula is immediately available to Turkish speakers as a tool for creating expressions. The easily graspable rhythmic nature of such expressions, which makes them simple enough to remember and use, may be rooted in human physiology, namely, in our internal biological metronome measuring the rhythmic expand-contract intervals of the breathing lungs and pulsing heart.
Heart specialists have traditionally represented the healthy sounds of the human heart (produced by the alternating closures of two valve pairings) as a balanced two-part compound—lub-dub—marking the binary cardiac cycle. For us to be healthy, or to be simply alive, the alternating heartbeat must be perfectly aligned with the intermittent workings of our lungs. As the lungs alternate between inhales and exhales, they also participate in the production of our speech, providing the air needed to vibrate our vocal cords and the energy needed to move that air from the lungs. Because we need air to speak, we can speak only on exhale, and we continue speaking until we stop or run out of air.
The dependency of our speech on the limited physical capacity of our lungs and heart, expanding and contracting in unison with each other, is what ultimately accounts for the rhythmic, at times even musical, property of human speech, and specifically for the recurrent binary patterns found in speech. It's tempting to see the balancing effect of binary oppositions in almost everything in our lives. As chronic systematizers, we are built to seek recurrent patterns around us; we think and communicate through juxtapositions by establishing similarities and contrasting differences. Our language is organized in terms of binary oppositions (see below), which may also explain the habitualness in language of parallel grammatical forms, including rhythmic duplications and reduplications, typically consisting of repeated, synonymic, or oppositional notions:
in or out var mısın, yok musun | up and down aşağı yukarı, baştan aşağı | ebb and flow gelgit | inhale and exhale nefes al, nefes ver |
here and there orada burada | now and then arada sırada | open and close aç, kapat | birth and death doğma-ölme |
on and off kesik kesik | rise and fall iniş çıkış | come and go gel, git | good and evil iyi, kötü |
Inherent in the binary rhythm is the sense of balance, continuity, order, certainty, even finality, which may explain why Turkish language users do not feel the need to add in reduplications any clarifying or finalizing conjunction. Balanced asyndetic duplications can range from the syntactic pairings of binômes to more subtle oppositional pairings, which can be found in both Turkish fiction and nonfiction, as the many examples below illustrate (note that in English most of such pairings must be expressed syndetically):
Salona yürürken yukarı çıkmaya, çalışmaya karar verdi.
As he was walking to the living room, he decided to go upstairs and study.
Orhan Pamuk, Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları
Hafızasında gerisi gelmeyen birkaç hayal vardı. Bunlardan biri, annesinin yola çıkar çıkmaz değişmesiydi. Artık o, kocasının ölüsü üzerinde ağlayan, sızlayan kadın değildi.
He had fragmented memories, one of which was the way his mother was transfigured on the exodus. No longer was she a wife who wept and moaned over her husband’s corpse.
Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar, Huzur
Ali Rıza Bey evvelâ şaşırdı; oğlunun da öteki çocukları gibi değiştiğine, bozulduğuna hükmetti.
Ali Rıza Bey was initially surprised; he concluded that his son had changed, got corrupted like his other children.
Reşat Nuri Güntekin, Yaprak Dökümü
Being a pronoun-dropping language, Turkish often omits (nulls) subjects in sentences if the subject is already expressed by the predicate's suffix. An object may also be omitted if it is repeated and has the same case marker. The common omission of sentential arguments results in the frequent pattern of duplicated predicates (in compound predicates), as seen in Pamuk's sentence below:
Mektubun bende olduğunu, okuduğumu öğrenince şakasını nasıl bulduğumu sordu, güldü.
When he found out that I had the letter and that I had read it, he asked me what I thought of his joke and laughed.
Orhan Pamuk, Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları
This sentence has a common usage error in Turkish: a faulty omitted object (mektubu).
In the asyndetic pair of the verbs sordu and güldü, the subject is nulled, since it's inferable from the absence of predicate's suffix. In the asyndetic pair of the verbals olduğunu and okuduğu, the second verbal has no object, even though the verbal form is transitive (and requires an object). Its absence suggests that it's the same as the object of the first verbal in the pair, even though the case marker of the omitted object mektup would be different with okuduğu: mektubun bende olduğunu, mektubu okuduğumu öğrenince. Although technically such an omission is grammatically incorrect (constituting another prevalent usage issue in Turkish), it is a common occurrence not only in Turkish speech but also in literary Turkish writings, driven by the impulse to avoid repetitions at all costs. As long as the reader can unambiguously identify the referent from the context, any omission of an argument or possessor seems to be justifiable in contemporary Turkish, including the omission of indirect objects with three-place verbs (e.g., bana in the clause şakasını nasıl bulduğumu [bana] sordu or in the clause kestane şekeri [bana] ikram etti, in the last sentence of this section).
The sentence below has one syndetic series (with three items) and two asyndetic pairs, one of which is a pair of two verbs, aldı (took) and götürdü (took away). Represented as a pair of duplicated predicates, it is, in fact, the informally rephrased lexicalized verb composite alıp götürdü (took away):
[Borçlarım, borçlarımın faizi ve evlenme masrafları] [elimde avucumda] kalan birkaç parça malı [aldı, götürdü].
What property I had left went towards the wedding expenses and my debts.
Sabahattin Ali, Kürk Mantolu Madonna
The inclination to reduplicate things in Turkish is so strong that it can trigger the balancing linguistic process of backgrounding to the post-verb area of a constituent that can be guessed from the context (mostly the topic). For example, the object Hatçe is backgrounded to the post-verb area to emphasize al (take) git (go), which evokes the common idiomatic expression başını alıp gitmek (to go away, to leave):
Sen, al git Hatçe’yi.
[Take] Hatche and [go].
Y. Kemal, İnce Memed
Kestane şekeri ikram etti, yedim.
He offered me candied chestnuts, which I ate.
Orhan Pamuk, Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları
On the other hand, as I mentioned above, the process of duplication is aligned with the mechanism of pronominal omission (nulling) of any inferable or shared arguments or possessors. The two independent clauses that constitute the second sentence both have their subjects omitted, o and ben, since they can be inferred from the predicates' suffixes (or the lack thereof). Both clauses also share the object kestane şekeri (candied chestnuts), which is, therefore, omitted at its second mention. The first clause has also an elided indirect object, bana, which is assumed to be unambiguously inferable from the context and, therefore, omissible.
🔔 The curious thing about Turkish sentences is that the seemingly extreme omission of valuable arguments and possessors often goes together with excessive modification and “padding” of sentences with extraneous and redundant elements.
Repetitive Duplications in Turkish Fiction
The preference for linking constituents without a conjunction and the morphologically rhythmic structuring of reduplications may explain why there are so many duplicated, reduplicated, rhyming, and almost rhyming paired modifiers and binary expressions in Turkish. The easiness of juxtaposing elements in Turkish sentences without having to indicate the nature of the connection also contributes to the apparent overload of reduplications in contemporary Turkish, with some repetitiveness becoming inevitable.
In fact, persistently repetitive and, at times, redundant use of synonymic and near-synonymic duplicated expressions is one of the common usage issues in literary Turkish. The issue is pervasive, and repetitive expressions can be found in the works of major Turkish authors:
Küçük hanım, biraz da hiç uğramadığı, görmediği bizim sınıfta büyüdü.
The young lady was, you might say, raised in our very classroom, though she never entered it.
Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar, Huzur
Aşırı sevgisinden, çocuklarına düşkünlüğünden bunalmış, haklarında her şeyi bilme, öğrenme merakına kızmış, sürekli yemek pişirip onlara yedirme arzusunu küçümsemişlerdi.
They were overwhelmed by her excessive love and devotion to her children, angry at her curiosity to know everything about them, and disdainful of her desire to constantly cook and feed them.
Ayşe Kulin, Sevdalinka
Arife Hanım’ın ikameti evde uzadıkça, ta çocukluğundan beri tanıdığı o keskin hiddet çoyalır, büyürdü.
As Arife the gossip’s visit to the house dragged on, Sabire’s rage, which Arife had known since childhood, mounted.
Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar, Huzur
Mehmet ile ihtiyar yazarın görüşmelerinde birbirlerinin gözlerinden her şeyi anladıklarını biliyorum. Mehmet onu aramış, araştırmış.
I know that when Mehmet and the old writer talked, they understood everything in each other’s eyes.
Mehmet had been looking for him and had looked him up.
Orhan Pamuk, Yeni Hayat
Füreya, başlarda, üvey oğullarını huzurlarını bozacağından çok korkmuştu. 1917 doğumlu olan Fahir zaten çoktan kendi hayatını kurmuştu. Gündüz ile Keskin’in tepkilerini, babaları genç karısına yansıtmamayı başardı. Füreya sadece onlar tarafından sevilmediğini, istenmediğini bildi, o kadar.
At first, Füreya was afraid that her stepsons would disturb their peace. Fahir, who was born in 1917, had already settled down. Their father managed to guard his young wife from Gündüz and Keskin’s actions. All Füreya knew was that she was not loved or wanted by them.
Ayşe Kulin, Füreya
Kerim Ağa’ya ilendiler, sonra tekrar bir şeyler pişirip, hazırlayıp yemeye başladılar.
They complained to Kerim Agha. Then they cooked and ate something again.
Sabahattin Ali, “İki Kadın”
Oğlu Ruşen her gün babasının elinden tutar, yede yede eve götürür, evden getirir, onun yıkılmış, ezilmiş, kırılmış gönülcüğünü elinden geldiğince hoş ederdi.
Every day, his son Ruşen would hold his father’s hand and pick him up from home, then walk him back home, and try to repair his father’s broken, shattered heart as gently and lovingly as he could.
Yaşar Kemal, Üç Anadolu Efsanesi
Çerkes dadıyı da makinist oğlu yani onlara, gece gündüz anlayacakları dille uğraşmışlar, bıkmadan, usanmadan, kızıp darılmadan söylemişlerdi.
To the Circassian nanny and the machinist's son (to them, that is), they tried to explain it day and night in a language they could understand, without a sign of boredom, anger, or offence.
K. Tahir, Esir Şehrin İnsanları
Muallim olarak geldiğim şehir(,) Orta Anadolu’nun bozkırlarında bir cilt yarası gibi intizamsız, karışık ve kirli uzanıyor, yayılıyordu.
The city that I came to as a teacher was spread in the steppes of Central Anatolia as irregular, confused, and dirty like a skin wound.
S. Ali, Bir Skandal
Esasen Hakkı Celis’in arzu ettiği şey, bu sofradan bir an evvel uzaklaşmak, kaçmaktı; hemen ayağa kalktı.
Essentially, what Hakkı Celis wanted was to get away from this table as soon as possible. He stood up immediately.
Yakup Kadrı Karaosmanoğlu, Kiralık Konak
Selim, sevdiği, âşık olduğu, beğendiği bir erkekti, onun kıskanılmaya layık olduğuna inanıyordu ama Taner beğenmediği, sevmediği, hatta kızdığı, zekâsını küçümsediği, kaba bulduğu biriydi.
Selim was a man she loved and admired, believing he was worthy of her jealousy. Taner, however, was someone for whom she felt no love but anger, a rude man, an insult to her intelligence.
Ahmet Altan, En Uzun Gece
Not all repetitive modifiers are morphological duplications. In the sentences below, the modifiers yorgun (tired) and bitkin (exhausted) or çaba isteyen (requiring effort) and zor (difficult) duplicate each other semantically. And so is the part sivri iki nokta (pointy dots) of the modifier siyah sivri iki noktaya benzeyen (resembling two black pointy dots), since dots are already characterized by being pointy:
Yataktan çok yorgun bitkin kalktı.
He rose from his bed, tired, exhausted.
Yaşar Kemal, İnce Memed
Onu derhal, hemen bu akşam görmeliydim.
I had to see her at once, before the night was out.
Sabahattin Ali, Kürk Mantolu Madonna
Çaba isteyen zor bir işti bu yaptığı ama.
What he did was a job that required effort, though.
Osman Şahin, Mahşer
Köylü, siyah sivri iki noktaya benzeyen mini mini gözler.
The tiny eyes of a peasant, like two black pointy dots.
Ö. Seyfettin, Beyaz Lale
Linguists call such repetitive duplications (used in connection with the same constituent) tautological.
Repetitive Duplications in Turkish Nonfiction
Redundant “padding” and repetitive duplications are very common in nonfiction writing, with the main culprits being educational and reference textbooks, books on criticism, self-help books, opinion writing in online/printed newspaper and magazine columns, news analysis, social/political commentary, and promotional writing, including publicity/publisher’s blurbs (for a book or a movie), PR releases, and other marketing materials, as illustrated by the examples below (note the highlighted items).
The first example from a self-help book is a motherload of redundant duplications:
Hatta belki kimsesiz, yapayalnız bir seyyah olduğunu söyleyeceksindir kendine. Hiç kimsenin seni olduğun gibi, tam ve bütün olarak göremediğinden, anlayamadığından, fark edemediğinden yürürken bazen çok yalnız hissedeceksindir kendini. Belki çekip gitme arzusu, ortalardan kaybolma isteği, her şeyi bırakıp gitme ihtiyacı doğacak içine. Bilileri seni arayıp bulsun, görsün, fark etsin, anlasın diye kaybolmak isteyeceksindir.
Maybe you will even tell yourself that you are a [lonely], [solitary] traveler. Sometimes, you may feel very lonely when walking on the street because no one [sees you], [understands you], [notices you] as you are, as a [whole], [complete] person. Maybe you will feel [the desire to walk away], [the desire to disappear], [the need to leave everything behind]. You will want to get lost so that others can [find you], [see you], [notice you], [understand you].
Hakan Mengüç, Sen Yola Çık Yol Sana Görünür
Other culprits are opinion column writers and other public opinion makers, cultural analysts, political commentators and ideologs, who do not shy away from adding some drama in their writing by using emphatic (and redundant) reduplications. Frequent repetitiveness is a stylistic choice of such writing. The excerpt below, for example, uses many words that say the same thing:
Kimi, hangisini, niçin seçmeliyiz? Seçmedeki ölçümüz ne olacak? Hangi tercihimiz doğru olur? Seçme kabiliyetimizi doğruya/hakka kullanmak sorumluluğumuz var. (…) Parti tercihi yön, yol, düzen, medeniyet, zihniyet, reçete tercihidir. Sadece araç seçimi değildir; yol, menzil, şoför, rehber, veli, vekil seçimidir de. Yol doğru, rehber bilge/ehil, emin, adil, dürüst, müşfik, araç sağlam olmalı, yalan söylememeli, aldatmamalı, aldanmamalı da.
Whom should we elect, which one, and why? What criteria will we follow? Which choice would be the right one? We have a responsibility to make the right choice. […] Electing a party is akin to deciding on the direction, path, plan, civilization, mindset, and recipe. It is not just about deciding on a vehicle; it is also about deciding on the [road], [destination], driver, guide, guardian, and delegate. The path must be right; the guide must be wise, competent, safe, fair, honest, and compassionate; the vehicle must be solid; no lies are allowed, nor deception.
Bahaddin Elçi, “Ne sağ ne sol, ne cumhur ne millet, tek seçenek” from Millî Gazete
The author adds excessive “padding” to the simple phrase doğru seçim yapmak/ doğru seçmek turning it into the cumbersome seçme kabiliyetini doğruya/hakka kullanmak:
doğruya ... hakka OR doğruya ... hakka
Seçme kabiliyetimizi doğruya/hakka kullanmak sorumluluğumuz var.
lit. We have a responsibility to use our ability to choose correctly and fairly.
Bahaddin Elçi, “Ne sağ ne sol, ne cumhur ne millet, tek seçenek” from Millî Gazete
Revised:
Doğru seçimi yapma sorumluluğumuz var.
We have a responsibility to make the right choice.
This, of course, can be edited even further, since the entire point of the original sentence is just these three words:
Doğru seçim yapmalıyız.
We must make the right choice.
In another example, the modifiers iyi tanınan (well-known) and meşhur (famous) are too similar to be in the same sentence:
iyi tanınan ... meşhur OR iyi tanınan ... meşhur
Venüs’ün yüzey şekillerine isimleri verilecek kişilerin son üç yıldan önce ölmüş iyi tanınan, meşhur kadınlar olması gerekiyor.
Those after whom the Venusian landforms will be named should be the well-known women who died more than three years ago.
S. Evren, “Venüs’ün Kadınları”, Atlas Dergisi
The next two examples from an educational text illustrate tautological duplications:
son ... bitim OR son ... bitim
Sonu, bitimi ifade eden nokta elbette ki bütün noktalama işaretlerinin hem anası hem de isim babasıdır.
The period, which conveys the end, is of course both the mother of all punctuation marks and the father whose name they all carry.
Hadi Önal, Noktalama İşaretlerinin Dili
anlam kazanması ... anlaşılması OR anlam kazanması ... anlaşılması
Virgül, yazının âdeta anahtarıdır. Onsuz yazı karmakarışık bir hâl alır. Okuyucuya; “Dur! Hele bir nefes al!” dedirten bu işaret aynı zamanda metnin anlam kazanmasına ve anlaşılmasına vesile olur.
Comma is the key to any text. Without it, writing becomes chaotic. This sign makes the reader say, “Stop and take a breath!”, making the text meaningful.
Hadi Önal, Noktalama İşaretlerinin Dili
Promotional blurbs (on book jackets) and book prefaces are also a rich source of redundancy in writing, even in the writings of the best Turkish authors:
sizde, içinizde bir yerlerde OR sizde, içinizde bir yerlerde
O hikâyelerin sizde, içinizde bir yerlerde bunca zaman bir saklı su gibi beklemiş olduğunu fark eder[siniz].
You realize that those stories have been waiting inside you for a long time, like a spring in waiting.
Murathan Mungan, Önsöz, Erkeklerin Hikayeleri (Murathan Mungan’ın Seçtikleriyle)
Another sentence from a blurb on the jacket of Mario Levi's Karanlık Çökerken Neredeydiniz:
masumiyeti, saflığı OR masumiyeti, saflığı
Masumiyeti, saflığı kaybetmemiş o kuşağın romantik insanlarının politik nedenlerle farklı ülkelere gitmek zorunda kalışları konu ediliyor romanda.
The novel follows the story of the emigration of that generation of idealists who, nevertheless, managed to preserve their innocence.
From the book jacket blurb for Mario Levi's Karanlık Çökerken Neredeydiniz, published by Doğan Kitap
hudutsuz ... sonsuzdur OR hudutsuz ... sonsuzdur
Zira tabiatın güzelliği hudutsuz, sonsuzdur.
For the beauty of nature knows no bounds.
A. Ş. Hisar, Boğaziçi Mehtapları
bilinen ... tanınmış OR bilinen ... tanınmış
Bilim, sanat, felsefe, siyaset vb. alanlarda bilinen, tanınmış kişilerle yapılan görüşmelerde ele alınan orijinal konularla ilgili sorulara verilen cevapları okuyucuya aktarmak üzere kaleme alınan yazılara röportaj denir.
Interviews are texts written to convey to the reader the answers given to questions about original subjects discussed in interviews with well-known people in the fields of science, art, philosophy, politics, etc.
Türk Dili, Yazılı ve Sözlü Anlatım, ed. Nurettin Demir and Emine Yılmaz
araştırmalar ... incelemeler OR araştırmalar ... incelemeler
Her birinin bu yazın türündeki etkinliği üstüne araştırmalar, incelemeler yapmaya değer.
It is worth doing research on the effectiveness of each of them in this literary genre.
Azra Erhat, Sevgi Yönetimi
If used to convey an emotion or to amplify the meaning of the repeated words, potentially excessive modifiers may be forgiven in the literary or informal context. However, in formal, technical, and nonfiction writing, the goal is almost the opposite—that is, to swiftly get down to the main point using precise and neutral language.
Comments