A COMPARISON OF DIRECTIVES IN ENGLISH AND TURKISH

Robin Turner, 1996

A COMPARISON OF DIRECTIVES IN ENGLISH AND TURKISH Introduction If discourse analysis is still a relatively young discipline, typological discourse analysis is still in its infancy. The majority of discourse analysis is still concerned largely with English and despite some treatment of non-Indo-European languages in Coulthards Introduction to Discourse Analysis (1985), there have been relatively few attempts to compare systematically discourse features of European and nonEuropean languages (Myhill, 1992). The advantages of such an approach are considerable: firstly, it is possible to determine which features of discourse vary across languages and cultures; secondly, it may subsequently be posssible to establish universal discourse rules; more practically, it should become easier to identify and remedy some of the problems which foreign language learners face. To this end, this paper compares two languges - English and Turkish - in terms of one type of speech act - directives. In doing so, the focus will be on linguistic form: for reasons of space other discourse features will be treated only in passing, and intonation will not be dealt with at all. Before proceeding to a comparison of English and Turkish, however, it is necessary to consider the nature of directive acts in general. Directives are all attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something (Coulthard 1985:24). This obviously includes a wide range of functions, notably request, command, instruction and, to an extent, advice (Coulthard also lists dare, challenge and invitation and we could add warning and threat, for example). The boundaries between these various functions are not fixed; as with all speech acts, the hearer is free to exploit the illocutionary potential of an utterance by putting on it whatever reasonable interpretation he wishes (Willis, 1992:122). It is possible to clarify these functions in terms of conditional sentences:REQUEST COMMAND If you do this, I will be pleased. If you do not do this, you will not be fulfilling your obligations/ will incur some penalty. INSTRUCTION If you do this, the task will be completed. ADVICE If you do this, you are more likely to achieve your goals. It should be clear from this that instructions and are advice are not always directives. If the speaker has no personal interest in the hearers completing a task (e.g., giving a stranger directions to the post office) then the instruction cannot really be counted as a directive, even if it uses the imperative. Advice is even more problematic, since the emphasis is on the hearers goals rather than the speakers. For this reason, advice will not be treated in this discussion, except in passing when it overlaps with other types of directive. It has become a commonplace that, as Candlin puts it, the characterization of utterance function cannot be left to the tender mercies of linguistic form (introduction to Coulthard, 1985:ix). Nevertheless, there is obviously some relationship between form and function, otherwise the speaker would be free to choose any form to express any function. Directives forms in English The effect of a directive in English is dependent on at least three structural factors:1. The type of clause used (imperative, interrogative, declarative or moodless); 2. Whether the verb uses the immediate ("present") or remote ("past") form; 3. Whether the directive is embedded. As has been noted, all four clause types can be used to form directives, and while the imperative may be the unmarked form grammatically, it is most certainly marked interactively. In general, using an imperative marks the statement as either a command or an instruction. For it to be interpreted as the latter, an instructional context is required, and if this context is lacking, there is a risk that the imperative will be interpreted as a command, and thus an extreme Face Threatening Act, to use Browns and Levinson's term (Coulthard,1985:50). As was stated earlier, a command is inherently threatening, since the implication is that if the hearer does not perform the act, they will have failed to fulfill some obligation, and/or will incur some penalty. It is for this reason that imperatives are relatively rare in general conversation.

Interrogatives form the most common alternative to imperatives. The softening effect of questioning can be seen in a sentence like "Put the kettle on, will you?" where even though the essential structure is imperative, the tag question is capable of disguising the command as a request (admittedly still a fairly strong one, restricting this form to intimate or superior/subordinate relationships). The problem, of course, comes in determining that an interrogative clause is a request for action and not just for information. This subject has been discussed extensively, notably by Coulthard, Montgomery and Brazil (1981). If we look at Searle's six categories of indirect (i.e not imperative) directives (listed in Coulthard 1985:27), it is immediately apparent that those sentences which concern the hearer usually take an interrogative form. These are questions about the hearer's ability, future action or willingness. Of these, the least face-threatening (and most common) is the first type, possibly because it can be interpreted as a simple question as well as a directive, allowing the hearer to refuse on the grounds of inability rather than unwillingness. The basic structure is: can/could you (possibly) + VERB or its embedded form: do you think you could (possibly) + VERB. It is here that we see the immediate/remote distinction. The issue of "remoteness" as a property of the second form of the verb and its use for politeness has been dealt with by Lewis (1986) amongst others; suffice it to say here that the distinction is not simply one of formality (see also Gunther, 1990). Questions about the hearers future action can use will or be going to. The former is so common as a request form that it is doubtful whether the modal in this case really refers to future activity at all; there are good grounds to see will here as an indication of willingness. Directives using Will you ...? still risk abruptness and are often softened by using the future continuous (often as a preliminary question) e.g. Will you be going to the bank?. Questions with be going to, since they obviously concern the hearers intention, are much more face threatening e.g. Are you going to turn that radio down (or what)? Willingness questions are perhaps less face threatening than future action questions, but still require some caution. Compare the following:Do you mind! Would you mind .....? Would you awfully mind ....? Im sorry, but would you awfully mind ....? Here we see remote form politeness (would), addition of awfully, and a pre-head (Im sorry). Another, less common, type of willingness question is do you want / would you like. This usually requires a context where it is agreed that speaker and hearer will share tasks, or the hearer has already offered to help e.g. Need a hand? Yeah, hang on, do you want to peel those potatoes? An exception is the pseudo-willingness question found in situations where the hearer has no real choice, an obvious example being the classroom. A final question-type worth considering is the embedded question Can/Could I ask/remind/request..... In English, referring explicitly to the nature of the speech act is not common, and such directives are mainly found in formal or superior/subordinate situations. Declarative directives can be grouped into three broad categories:1. Embedded forms; 2. Modal forms; 3. General statements intended to be interpreted as directives.

Using embedded forms, it is possible to make an explicit directive by saying I want/ Id like/ I am asking you ..., but these require a situation where the hearer expects the speaker to give a command or instruction; outside this context the effect can be disastrous. A similar case of embedding is found in official notices with the passive e.g. Passengers are requested not to leave their seats. A much more common embedded directive is I was wondering if you could.... In both cases embedding softens the directive, but the second, since it is embeds a question not an imperative, is generally perceived as more polite. Modal forms using should, ought to etc, are usually associated with advice and thus are only peripherally directive. Must and have to can be used as directives (e.g. You must pop in some time); however, this is not their primary function. Many student errors (irrespective of nationality) result from overuse of such forms as directives. Other declarative clauses, if they are to be interpreted as directives, must rely heavily on context and cotext. Normally such declaratives draw the hearers attention to a problem that needs remedying, as in the celebrated Its cold here (Willis, 1992), or an action which is proscribed (Coulthard et al. 1981:12). It is therefore hard to specify preferred declarative forms. The same considerations apply as much or more to moodless directives. There are a few standard words which can be easily recognised as directives (e.g. door, phone) but apart from these it is the context which is crucial. The hearer needs to know that, for example, if a surgeon says scalpel he or she means Give me a scalpel. Similarly it is the context of a restaurant which makes the notice Thank you for not smoking directive. Although the variety of possible forms that a directive may take may at first sight appear bewildering, it should be emphasized that there are relatively few utterances that a listener would be inclined to interpret as a directive in the absence of strong contextual indications. Problems, when they occur, are more likely to arise when there is a mismatch between the preferred forms of different languages. Directive forms in Turkish Turkish, as an Altaic language, presents difficulties for the discourse analyst. Myhill (1992) points out that trying to force non-Indo-European languages into ready-made grammatical terminology can create difficulties when comparing form and function, since terms such as "modal" or "imperative" may not transfer easily from one language to another. At present the best solution seems to be to use English terms where these seem appropriate (bearing in mind that such corespondences will be approximate) and to supplement these with Turkish terms where necessary. One feature of Turkish which will not be dealt with here is vowel harmony; in Turkish, vowels in suffixes may change according to the vowel(s) of the noun or verb stem. To avoid confusion, suffixes have been written as though following a stem with the vowel a, usually with the verb-stem yap- (do). Turkish is an agglutinative language: nouns and verbs are modified by adding suffixes in a fixed order, with no change to the stem. The number of possible combinations of suffixes is vast: Wickwire (1987) lists over a thousand forms of one verb. A further point worth noting is that Turkish, like many European languages, uses the second person plural as a polite form; the pronouns sen/siz correspond to tu/vous or du/Sie. These in turn give the personal verb suffixes -n and -nz. These general features of Turkish give us two points of relevance with regard to directives:1. Turkish is more concise than English, so directives are usually shorter; 2. Turkish has a greater range of available forms, so form may take a greater communicative weight. The forms available for directives in Turkish can, with caution, be classified into the same clause-types as were used in English: imperative, interrogative, declarative and moodless. There are two forms in Turkish corresponding roughly to the English imperative: emir (order) and istek (desire). The emir form of yapmak (to do) is conjugated as follows (personal pronouns in brackets):1. 2. 3. (ben) (sen) (o) sing. yapaym (biz) yap yapsn pl. yapalm (siz) yapn(z) (onlar) yapsnlar

The second person singular consists of the stem without suffix, and thus corresponds closely to the English imperative. Using the second person plural has an additional use as a polite singular, and adding -iz makes it extremely formal. Yapaym (I'll do it) would not be regarded as an imperative in English; Turks explain it as "giving yourself an order". Yapalm is a suggestion form, and corresponds closely to the English "Let's". The third person forms have no exact equivalent in English; the general idea is "may it be so". They are used frequently as directives, either in the passive (yaplsn - may it be done) or with the structure adjective+olsun e.g. paket - li ol - sun packet+with be+IMP+it (Can you wrap it up?). The istek form, classified by Underhill (1986) as optative, is rarely used on its own in modern colloquial Turkish. However, the second person singular form yapa is worth noting. This form, meaning roughly "I would like you to do it", is still common in rural areas, but in urban (cultured) Turkish, the final -a has been dropped, with the effect that the emir and istek forms have become identical. The sociolinguistic effect of this change is considerable; imagine what would happen in English if "I would like you to do it" became contracted to "Do it." A variation on the imperative is to add ver (give), so we have yapver (the addition of - is for phonetic, not structural reasons). This usually implies that the action can be performed quickly, and probably without too much effort e.g. itiver - give it a push. In informal conversation it is frequently used as an alternative to the simple imperative as a case of positive politeness. As in English, question forms are frequently used for directives; in fact they are probably the most commonly used forms. Question forms can take either the geni zaman (usually termed aorist and frequently compared to English Simple Present) or the gelecek zaman (future tense). Thus we have: Aorist Future Tense suffix -ar-acakFamiliar yapar msn yapacak msn Formal yapar msnz yapacak msnz

These may correspond to Searles willingness and future intention questions respectively. The aorist question form is the most commonly used for straightforward requests in both formal and informal situations. This points to one significant difference with English Simple Present; as Aksu-Ko (1988:158) indicates, The aorist ... also has modal functions, particularly those of indicating potentiality or intention, depending on context. The present question form is also frequently used with the auxiliary suffix -abil-, which designates ability (the morphological similarity is probably co-incidental). Thus we have yapabilir misin(iz) - Can you do it?. As in English this can be interpreted as either a directive or a request for information. Similar rules seem to apply as to how the listener intuits the function. Just as in English, any declarative clause can be a directive if the context allows it to be interpreted as such. Declaratives with high directive potential include the gerek and art forms. Gerek (necessity) is indicated by the suffix -mal-. It is used for strong advice e.g., yapmalsn - You ought/have to do it. Necessity can also be expressed using a verbal noun (e.g. yapman - your doing) followed by an adjective or verb:yapman lazm gerek gerekir gerekiyor (adjective) (adjective) (aorist) (present continuous)

These have more-or-less the same meaning, being slightly softer than the -mal- suffix. A further structure is infinitive+zorundasn, which is used for compulsion, implying that the listener has no choice in the matter whatsoever. It should be noted here that establishing a one-to-one correspondence between English

modal verbs and their Turkish equivalents is virtually impossible; Yldrm's A Practical Course in Turkish (1988) unhelpfully uses must/have to to translate all the above expressions. The art (conditional) suffix -sa- can be used for directives with the present tense to give yaparsan(z). This is followed by a clause to indicate the desirability of the action e.g. iyi ol - ur good be+AOR+it sevin - ir - im pleased+AOR+I More importantly, art frequently takes a final -a to give the suffix -sana. Swift (1963:161) speculates that this is a variant form of the interjective particle /ya/ but it is more likely that it is in fact the second person singular istek (Turner, N., personal communication, 1996). Like yapver, yapsana is used in informal conversation as a softer alternative to the imperative yap (especially in speech communities where yapa is no longer used); however, it is inappropriate for use with people the speaker does not know personally. This can be illustrated by the case of a Dutch customer who asked a waiter to write down the order by saying yazsana. This prompted a Turkish friend to comment later that he might know Turkish, but he didnt know how to talk to people, this despite the fact that this was a student/working class bar, where familiar forms were common (Turner, N., personal communication, 1993). A type of declarative directive which is rather more common in Turkish than in English is to simply say I want (istiyorum). With an accusative verbal noun (e.g. yapman istiyorum) it amounts to saying I want you to... and has the same danger of abruptness as it would in English. It is, however, quite common to use noun+istiyorum (e.g. kahve istiyorum - I want / Id like coffee), since there is no distinction between I want.... and Id like.... (except perhaps for the ultrapolite and now rather affected subjunctive isterdim). Nevertheless, an equivalent softening effect for most verbs can be provided by combining the future -ecek- and past -ti- suffixes to give the Turkish equivalent of was going to. For example, when asking to speak to another person on the telephone, it is common to say: mdr - le manager-with gr - u - ecek - ti - m see+REC+FUT+PAST+I

Moodless directives occupy a similar position in Turkish to that in English, in that they are relatively rare, and outside well-defined contexts can be seen as abrupt. An important exception to this rule is the dative noun suffix -a. If the speaker wants someone to go somewhere, they can simply use the place with the dative, usually prefaced by haydi (come on) e.g. haydi sofraya (to the table) is often said when a meal is ready. This kind of directive is similar to yapsana in terms of when and with whom it can be used. An infelicitous example was provided by a headmistress talking to two ceramics teachers: Sizler atolyeye (You all, to the workshop). This was later commented on by one of the teachers as an example of the headmistresss general rudeness; it seems that unless it is obviously an invitation, this type of directive is equivalent to the emir imperative (Turner, N., personal communication, 1996). In general the situational and sociolinguistic factors affecting structure and lexis choices run parallel to those in English. As with English, the marked form (in this case the emir imperative) is not the most common (though it is still more common than in English) and the rules for determining whether other forms are to be interpreted as directives seem to parallel those put forward by Coulthard (1985). Nevertheless there are certain cultural differences affecting language choice which need to be taken into account. Degrees of formality, status and intimacy are both more apparent and more complex in Turkish society than in most of the English-speaking world. In assessing appropriate register at least three factors need to be taken into account:SITUATION informal <-----> formal STATUS equal <------> unequal RELATIONSHIP intimate <-----> distant As was seen in the case of the bar conversation, the Dutch customers minor faux pas resulted from his confusing an informal situation with an intimate relationship. It is generally these mixed situations that cause difficulty for the foreigner and discourse analyst alike. For example, status is more acknowledged in

Turkish families, producing unequal/intimate exchanges. Especially in conservative families there is a marked difference in directive forms between parents and children, and even husbands and wives (e.g., husbands are freer to use imperatives). A final question is whether Turkish can be said to be a more directive culture than English. In other words, do Turks feel freer to ask people to do things than the English? Are directives expressed more directly? Initial observations would seem to point to this conclusion, and some Turkish sources bear this out (Aknc, personal communication, 1996). However, it would be unwise to jump to Whorfian conclusions; a considerable amount of quantitative research would be necessary to substantiate this claim. Problems for Turkish learners of English When considering the mistakes that learners of English are likely to make, it is perhaps too easy too invoke the magic phrase L1 interference. Many, if not most, errors arise from inadequate knowledge or the way the language is taught. It may well be true that Turkish students overuse must, but is this an oversimplification of the considerable array of Turkish structures to express necessity and obligation, or is it simply because must occurs relatively early in most courses? Bearing this caveat in mind, it is possible to identify some potential problems arising from the differing structures used for directives in English and Turkish. Some salient features can be shown as follows:ENGLISH Small range of structures, syntax-based. Large vocabulary Tense used for politeness (indirectness) TURKISH Large range of structures, agglutinative Small vocabulary Polite pronoun and verb forms

For beginners especially, simple errors arise through using the nearest English equivalent to structures which express directives in Turkish but not in English. The most common error of this type is to use English Simple Present to translate the Turkish Aorist tense. Yapar msn translates adequately as Do you do it? if we are inquiring about habits, but not if we are making a request. Another, less common, error is to say May you do it? which probably arises from an attempt to translate yapn by analogy with yapsn or even yapaym (which in the question form translates as May I do it?). Similarly, some structures in Turkish, while not absent in English, are less common; as has been mentioned, conditional clauses are frequently used for requests in Turkish, but less so in English. Yaparsan sevinirim can be translated as If you do it, Ill be pleased, but the result is rather unidiomatic. The tendency of Turkish students to overuse imperatives has a number of possible causes. The first, and most obvious, is that the imperative is the easiest structure to use, however infelicitous it may be. This of course is a problem for students of any nationality. A more interesting possibility is that imperatives are more common in Turkish, partly because of the demise of the istek form, and partly because the emir form has a polite imperative (yapn/yapnz). It is also possible that the absence of any equivalent of the -sana suffix may lead students to use the imperative by default. The same is to an extent true of the -ver suffix. While this can sometimes be translated by the English Have a ----- or Give it a -----, this is not always the case, and besides, these forms are rarely taught at an elementary level, and the author has hardly ever heard them in the conversation of Turkish students who have not spent time in an English-speaking country. There are, of course, some structures in English which have no exact equivalent in Turkish, although these are not always problematic. The use of the second form of modal verbs (could, would) for indirectness rarely presents problems (unless it is badly taught). A more problematic area is that of embedded questions, which have no equivalent in Turkish. Questions such as I wonder if / Do you think you could ....? are very rarely used by Turkish students. A weakness of the above analysis is the lack of quantitative data. It is easy for the casual observer of a language to say X structure is commonly used in Y situation for Z purpose, but without hard data based on an extensive corpus, this kind of statement must inevitably be viewed somewhat sceptically. Apart from anything else, linguists are as subject to L1 interference as students. Similarly, teachers cannot hope to notice all student errors, so it is possible that they will prioritize the errors that they expect to find given the level and nationality of the class. All that a paper such as this can hope to do is to present some commonly used structures in both languages and offer some speculations about their relevance to the teaching situation.

REFERENCES Aksu-Koc, A. (1988) The aquisition of aspect and modality: the case of past reference in Turkish. Cambridge: CUP. Coulthard, M; Montgomery, M: Brazil, D. (1981) Developing a description of spoken discourse. Studies in Discourse Analysis (ed. Malcolm Coulthard & Martin Montgomery). London RKP. Coulthard, M. (1985) An introduction to discourse analysis. (2nd ed.) Harlow: Longman. Coulthard, M & Sinclair, J. (1992) Towards an analysis of discourse. Advances in spoken discourse analysis. (ed. M. Coulthard). London: Routledge. Gunther, K. (1990) Critical Discourse Analysis. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Vol 11. Cambridge; New York: CUP. Lewis, M. (1986) The English verb: an explanation of structure and meaning. LTP. Myhill, J. (1992) Typological discourse analysis. Cambridge, Mass.:Blackwell. Swift, L. (1963) A reference grammar of modern Turkish. Bloomington: Indiana University. Underhil, R. (1986) Turkish. Studies in Turkish linguistics. (ed. Dan Isaac Slobin & Karl Zimmer). Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Wickwise, D. (1987). A Grammatical analysis of the Turkish verb system. Los Angeles: Pacific Western University. Willis, D. (1992) Caught in the act: using the rank scale to address problems of delicacy. Advances in spoken discourse analysis. (ed. M. Coulthard). London: Routledge. Yildirim, M. (1988) A practical course in Turkish. Istanbul: Haset Kitabevi.