But this is how auxiliaries are born. They are ordinary verbs in the beginning and then they adapt more and more grammatical functions. In the end they lose their own special characters and begin to mainly serve the main verb. Besides, auxiliary as a linguistic term is not a yes or no question, its more like a continuum from relatively full verbs of the lexicon into transfixed grammatical elements. German or Swedish modal auxiliaries, for instance are not as grammaticalized as those of English.

In Turkish they usually follow the route to being a suffix in the end.

Take -ebilir (supposedly) suffix as an example:

It is actually bil-mek with gerund form of another verb. Now what do you call bilmek here? Auxiliary? It acctually acts as the main verb grammatically because it´s the conjugated one. Yet we treat as a suffix nowadays.

gidebilirim = gid-e bilirim

Grammaticalization is a language universal. And in my opinion, -bilmek is on this path into a full suffix. It is fighting against. For instance, it refuses to follow vowel harmony. But it will have to give up.

I don´t know how to call it. I understand what you mean when you object the term auxiliary. It doesn´t take into account the special characteristics of Turkish grammar. But in every language grammatical elements tend to develop from frequently used lexical elements.

Probably no. Because we have a parallel development. Take present continuous tense form in Turkish.

It was a similar construction with the verb "yorımak" (to walk, it has become ""yürümek" in today´s Turkish). Now we don´t even notice that it is actually "yürümek" in it.

gide yorı-r -> gide-yor -> gid-iyor

And it still doesn´t follow vowel harmony.

If the comparable verb has disappeared (gone through serious phonetical changes) from the dictionary the more reason there is for -iyor- to be swallowed up. -ebil- still has some hope because speakers can recognize the independent verb that it represents.

But who knows. Turkish is quite stubborn with its vowel harmony but it also tolerates many exceptions without staggering in its principals. The massive scramble of loan words didn´t effect the phonetical rules of the language.

These changes happen very slowly. When they become reality none of us will be around to post a "what did I say" message to the forum.

Actually there is some rationale it´s based on and it´s not a coincidence by any means. have you heard of Deny´s cube? The following is for Kazan Tatar. where Öü, Ee and Ou are seen in the middle. They should be at the corners for Turkish. Dotted (back) ones are on the top surface and dotless (front) ones at the bottom. They are parallel and that explains the major vowel harmony (büyük sesli uyumu) visually.

Yes, I have seen this cube before. I understand the position of the vowel in the cube represents the place of its pronouncing in the mouth. We have a vowel harmony in Finnish, too: a, o, u and ä, ö, y (ü) do not occur in the same word but e and i are free to pop up whereever they like. It´s a feature in language that serves economy.

But it can be lost, too. This is what happened in Estonian. (I guess during history they just had a few armies too much marching through their lands.)

Sounds like it´s similar to our "Major vowel harmony" of course you don´t have "ı" so "i" is your stray cat.

What is the difference between "ä" and "e"? During the discussion of moving to Latin script, they considered using "ä" instead of "e" because it was dotted like the others so it would be:

a ı o u (dotless)

ä i ö ü (dotted)

But later they decided it would be "e" instead of "ä" because it is a well-known letter in Latin script.

My ear can catch a clear ä in your language. It´s like e but wide. You sometimes pronounce your e narrow and sometimes wide. You don´t notice it because you don´t have to.

There is also a flaw in our system of dotted and undotted vowels. We mark ü with y. I remember the days when I realized y is a consonant in Turkish.