For the form of Turkish spoken in what is now modern Turkey during the 11th-15th centuries, see Old Anatolian Turkish. For the form used in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE), see Ottoman Turkish.
Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia.[1] It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Khaganate, and later the Uyghur Khaganate, making it the earliest attested Common Turkic language. In terms of the datability of extant written sources, the period of Old Turkic can be dated from slightly before 720 AD to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. Old Turkic can generally be split into two dialects, the earlier Orkhon Turkic and the later Old Uyghur. There is a difference of opinion among linguists with regard to the Karakhanid language, some (among whom include Omeljan Pritsak, Sergey Malov, Osman Karatay and Marcel Erdal) classify it as another dialect of East Old Turkic, while others prefer to include Karakhanid among Middle Turkic languages;[2] nonetheless, Karakhanid is very close to Old Uyghur.[3] East Old Turkic and West Old Turkic together comprise the Old Turkic proper, though West Old Turkic is generally unattested and is mostly reconstructed through words loaned through Hungarian.[4] East Old Turkic is the oldest attested member of the Siberian Turkic branch of Turkic languages, and several of its now-archaic grammatical as well as lexical features are extant in the modern Yellow Uyghur, Lop Nur Uyghur[5] and Khalaj (all of which are endangered); Khalaj, for instance, has (surprisingly) retained a considerable number of archaic Old Turkic words[6] despite forming a language island[7] within Central Iran and being heavily influenced by Persian.[8]Old Uyghur is not a direct ancestor of the modern Uyghur language,[9][10] but rather the Western Yugur language; the contemporaneous ancestor of Modern Uyghur was the Chagatai literary language.[11]
The Old Turkic script (also known variously as Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script) is the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkickhanates during the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Turkic language.[12]
This writing system was later used within the Uyghur Khaganate.[14] Additionally, a Yenisei variant is known from 9th-century Yenisei Kirghiz inscriptions, and it has likely cousins in the Talas Valley of Turkestan and the Old Hungarian alphabet of the 10th century. Words were usually written from right to left. Variants of the script were found in Mongolia and Xinjiang in the east and the Balkans in the west. The preserved inscriptions were dated between the 8th and 10th centuries.
Vowel roundness is assimilated through the word through vowel harmony. Some vowels were considered to occur only in the initial syllable, but they were later found to be in suffixes.[15] Length is distinctive for all vowels; while most of its daughter languages have lost the distinction, many of these preserve it in the case of /e/ with a height distinction, where the long phoneme developed into a more closed vowel than the short counterpart.
Old Turkic is highly restrictive in which consonants words can begin with: words can begin with /b/, /t/, /tʃ/, /k/, /q/, /s/, /ɫ/ and /j/, but they do not usually begin with /p/, /d/, /g/, /ɢ/, /l/, /ɾ/, /n/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/, /m/, /ʃ/, or /z/. The only exceptions are 𐰤𐰀 (ne, "what, which") and its derivatives, and some early assimilations of word-initial /b/ to /m/ preceding a nasal in a word such as 𐰢𐰤 (men, "I").
Grammar
Cases
There are approximately 12 case morphemes in Old Turkic (treating 3 types of accusatives as one); the table below lists Old Turkic cases following Marcel Erdal’s classification (some phonemes of suffixes written in capital letters denote archiphonemes which sometimes are dropped or changed as per (East) Old Turkic phonotactics):
^This Old Turkic accusative suffix is retained in Modern Turkish in the form of -jXg.[16]Karakhanid also employs this suffix.
^Khalaj is the only modern Turkic language to have retained this archaic case suffix, which fact has led Mahmud al-Kashgari to regard the suffix as a distinctive marker of Arghu language (i.e. Khalaj). Most of the remaining Turkic languages usually have -GA.[18]
^Old Turkic possessed an opposition between dative -ka and allative -gArU/-kArU cases, the latter perhaps derived secondarily from the former at the pre-Old Turkic stage. The dative case has been preserved intact in all the modern Siberian Turkic languages. On the other hand, the old allative has lost its case function, being preserved in a lexicalized manner in only a small number of adverbial expressions - for example, Uzbekichkari ‘towards inside’. However, Tuvan and Khakas have reintroduced the formal opposition into their respective case systems.
^Today this Old Turkic suffix is preserved as a case form in Altay and Shor.
^Though Khalaj retains this suffix as a case form (like Altay and Shor), it denotes locative case; which, at first glance, is aberrant.[20]
^Out of all Turkic languages, today this case is preserved only in Sakha (i.e. Yakut).
^In Orkhon Turkic. This ancient suffix is already rare by the time of Orkhon Turkic and the usage of this case with pronouns is not attested in the whole of Old Turkic. [21].
Old Turkic (like Modern Turkic) had 2 grammatical numbers: singular and plural. However, Old Turkic also formed collective nouns (a category related to plurals) by a separate suffix -(A)gU(n) e.g. tayagunuŋuz ‘your colts’.[22] Unlike Modern Turkic, Old Turkic had 3 types of suffixes to denote plural:[23]
-(X)t
-An
-lAr
Suffixes except for -lAr is limitedly used for only a few words. In some descriptions, -(X)t and -An may also be treated as collective markers.[24]-(X)t is used for titles of non-Turkic origin, e.g. tarxat ←tarxan 'free man' <Soghdian, tégit ←tégin 'prince' (of unknown origin). -s is a similar suffix, e.g. ïšbara-s 'lords' <Sanskrit īśvara. -An is used for person, e.g. ärän 'men, warriors' ←är 'man', oglan ←ogul 'son'.
Today, all Modern Turkic languages (except for Chuvash) use exclusively the suffix of the -lAr type for plural.
Verb
Finite verb forms in Old Turkic (i.e. verbs to which a tense suffix is added) always conjugate for person and number of the subject by corresponding suffixes save for the 3rd person, in which case person suffix is absent. This grammatical configuration is preserved in the majority of Modern Turkic languages, except for some such as Yellow Uyghur in which verbs no longer agree with the person of the subject.
Tense
Old Turkic had a complex system of tenses,[25] which could be divided into six simple[26] and derived tenses, the latter formed by adding special (auxiliary) verbs to the simple tenses.
Old Turkic simple tenses according to M. Erdal's classification
^Today, this form is preserved by two distinct branches of Turkic: Oghuz and the "Lena Group" of Turkic[27] (Sakha and Dolgan, in the form -батах).
Hapax legomena
Some suffixes are attested as being attached to only one word and no other instance of attachment is to be found. Similarly, some words are attested only once in the entire extant Old Turkic corpus.
Denominal
The following have been classified by Gerard Clauson as denominal noun suffixes.
Suffix
Usages
Translation
-ča
anča
thus, like that
-ke
sigirke yipke
sinew string/thread
-la/-le
ayla tünle körkle
thus, like that yesterday, night, north beautiful
-suq/-sük
bağïrsuq
(internal) organs
-ra/-re
içre
inside, within
-ya/-ye
bérye yırya
here north
-čïl/-čil
igčil
sickly
-ğïl/-gil
üçgil qïrğïl
triangular grey haired
-nti
ékkinti
second
-dam/-dem
tegridem
god-like
tïrtï:/-türti
ičtirti
inside, within
-qı:/-ki
ašnuki üzeki ebdeki
former (being) on or above being in the house
-an/-en/-un
oğlan eren
children men, gentlemen
-ğu:/-gü
enčgü tuzğu buğrağu
tranquil, at peace food given to a traveller as a gift being like a camel stud, aggressive
-a:ğu:/-e:gü:
üčegü ičegü
three together being inside human body, internal organ
-daŋ/-duŋ
otuŋ izdeŋ
firewood track, trace
-ar/-er
birer azar
one each a few
-layu:/-leyü
börileyü
like a wolf
-daš/-deš
qarïndaš yerdeš
kinsman compatriot
-mïš/-miš
altmïš yetmiš
sixty seventy
-gey
küçgey
violent
-çaq/-çek and -çuq/-çük
ïğïrčaq
spindle-whorl
-q/-k (after vowels and -r) -aq/-ek (the normal forms) -ïq/-ik/-uq/-ük (rare forms)
ortuq
partner
-daq/-dek and(?) -duq/-dük
bağırdaq beligdek burunduq
wrap terrifying nose ring
-ğuq/-gük
çamğuq
objectionable
-maq/-mek
kögüzmek
breastplate
-muq/-a:muq
solamuk
left-handed (pejorative?)
-naq
baqanaq
"frog in a horse's hoof" (from baqa frog)
-duruq/-dürük
boyunduruq
yoke
Deverbal
The following have been classified by Gerard Clauson as deverbal suffixes.
Suffix
Usages
Translation
-a/-e/-ı:/-i/-u/-ü
oprı adrı keçe egri köni ötrü
hollow,valley branched,forked evening, night crooked straight, upright, lawful then, so
L. Johanson, A History of Turkic, in: The Turkic Languages, eds. L. Johanson & E.A. Csato, Routledge, London (1998), ISBN0-415-08200-5
Talat Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic, Uralic and Altaic Series Vol. 69, Indiana University Publications, Mouton and Co. (1968). (review: Gerard Clauson, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1969); Routledge Curzon (1997), ISBN0-7007-0869-3.
1These are traditional areas of settlement; the Turkic group has been living in the listed country/region for centuries and should not be confused with modern diasporas. 2State with limited international recognition.
