Turkic languages have been written, and are written, in a variety of scripts and according to various orthographical conventions. Employing all of these script systems or representing them by transliterations would be an inadequate basis for crosslinguistic comparisons in a survey such as the present one. Linguistic data are therefore normally given in a broad phonetic transcription (without brackets) that reflects typical sound segments, whether phonemic or subphonemic, e.g. Turkish ačïḳ ‘open’, Tatar yün ‘cheap’, Turkmen soŋ ‘end’, Uzbek åt ‘horse’. Graphic forms representing official orthographies as well as cited transcriptions are given in angle brackets (chevrons), e.g. Turkish ‹açık› ‘open’, Tatar ‹юнь› ‘cheap’, Turkmen ‹soň› ‘end’, Uzbek ‹ot› ‘horse’. Standard Turkish examples are, as a rule, rendered in their relatively well-known orthographic shapes, which are easily analyzable in phonetic terms, e.g. ‹açık› ‘open’. Where precise phonetic details are needed, IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcriptions are given in square brackets, e.g. Turkish [aʧɯk] ‘open’. Transcriptions indicating phonologically relevant units are enclosed in slashes, e.g. Turkish/at/ ‘horse’.