Old Turkic

Not to be confused with Proto-Turkic language or Turkic languages.

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
East Old Turkic, Old Turkic
Region	East Asia, Central Asia and parts of Eastern Europe
Era	8th–13th centuries
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Siberian Turkic South Siberian Old Siberian Turkic
Dialects	Orkhon Turkic Old Uyghur
Writing system	Old Turkic script, Old Uyghur alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	otk  – Old Turkish
Linguist List	otk Old Turkish
Glottolog	oldu1238

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]

East Old Turkic is attested in a number of scripts, including the Old Turkic script, the Old Uyghur alphabet, the Brahmi script, and the Manichaean script. The Turkic runiform alphabet of Orkhon Turkic was deciphered by Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893.

Writing systems

Main article: Old Turkic script

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 Turkic khanates during the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Turkic language. ^[12]

The script is named after the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia where early 8th-century inscriptions were discovered in an 1889 expedition by Nikolai Yadrintsev. ^[13]

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.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front		Back
	Unr.	Rnd.	Unr.	Rnd.
Close	i	y	ɯ	u
Mid	e	ø		o
Open			ɑ

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.

Consonants

	Labial		Dental		Post- alveolar		Velar		Uvular
Nasal		m		n		ɲ		ŋ
Stop	p	b	t	d	tʃ		k	g	q	ɢ
Fricative			s	z	ʃ
Tap/Flap				ɾ
Approximant			ɫ	l		j

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):

	Case Suffixes	Examples	Translation
Nominative	∅ (unmarked)	köŋül∅	heart
Genitive	-nIŋ	Tämürniŋ	Tämür’s
Accusative I (Pronominal Accusative)	-nI	bunï	this
Accusative II (Nominal Accusative)	-Ig/-Ug [lower-alpha 1]	kïzlarïg, Karlukug	girls, Karluk
Accusative III [17]	-(I)n	oglïmïn	my son’s
Dative	-ka [lower-alpha 2]	ordoka	to palace
Directive / Allative [lower-alpha 3]	-gArU [lower-alpha 4]	ävgärü	towards home
Locative	-tA/-dA	ävdä, suvlukta	in house, in vessel
Directive-Locative / Partitive-Locative	-rA	asra [lower-alpha 5] , bašra [lower-alpha 6]	below, at/towards/on head
Ablative	-dIn/-tIn -dAn	kaŋtïn	from father
Equative-Lative	-čA [lower-alpha 7] [lower-alpha 8]	tükägüčä	up to/till end
Instrumental	-In/-Un	okun	with arrow
Comitative [lower-alpha 9]	-lXgU [lower-alpha 10] -lUgUn [lower-alpha 11]	iniligü	together with young brother
Similative	-lAyU	yultuzlayu	like star(s)

1. This Old Turkic accusative suffix is retained in Modern Turkish in the form of -jXg. ^[16] Karakhanid also employs this suffix.
2. 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]
3. 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, Uzbek ichkari ‘towards inside’. However, Tuvan and Khakas have reintroduced the formal opposition into their respective case systems.
4. Rare in Buddhist Uyghur and Karakhanid. ^[19]
5. In directive-locative sense.
6. In partitive-locative sense.
7. Today this Old Turkic suffix is preserved as a case form in Altay and Shor.
8. Though Khalaj retains this suffix as a case form (like Altay and Shor), it denotes locative case; which, at first glance, is aberrant. ^[20]
9. Out of all Turkic languages, today this case is preserved only in Sakha (i.e. Yakut).
10. 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] .
11. In Manichaean Uyghur

Grammatical Number

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

Tense	Positive	Negative
Imperfect Aorist	-Ur	-mAz
Preterite (Simple Past)	-dI
Perfect Participle	-mIš	-mAdOk [lower-alpha 1]
Future	-dAčI	-mAčI
Vivid Past	-yOk	-mAyOk
Imminent Future	-gAlIr

1. 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
-ğa/-ge	kısğa öge bilge kölige tilge	short wise wise shadow slice
-ğma/-gme	tanığma	riddle, denial
-çı/-çi	otaçı: okıçı	healer priest, preacher
-ğuçı/-güçi	ayğuçı bitigüçi	councilor scribe
-dı/-di	üdründi ögdi alkadı sökti	chosen,parted,separated,scattered praised praised bran
-tı/-ti	arıtı uzatı tüketi	completely, clean lengthily completely
-du	eğdu umdu süktü	curved knife desire, covetousness campaigning
-ğu:/-gü	bilegü kedgü oğlağü	whetstone clothing gently nurtured
-ingü	bilingü etingü yeringü salıŋu	being in the know being prepared disgusted sling
-ğa:ç/-geç	kışgaç	pincers
-ğuç/-güç	bıçgüç	scissors
-maç/-meç	tutmaç	"saved" noodle dish
-ğut/-güt	alpağut bayağut	warrior merchant

Literary works

• Yenisei Inscriptions (8-10th centuries CE) - a group of texts in Old Turkic from Yenisei River basin.
• Uyuk-Tarlak inscription (date unknown) by an unknown writer (in Yenisei Kyrgyz)
• Elegest inscription (date unknown) by an unknown writer (in Yenisei Kyrgyz)
• Orkhon Inscriptions (732 and 735) by Yollıg Khagan (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Bain Tsokto inscriptions (716) by an unknown writer (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Ongin inscription (between 716 and 735) by an unknown writer (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Kul-chur inscription (between 723 and 725) a writer called "Ebizter" (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Altyn Tamgan Tarhan inscription (724) by an unknown writer (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Tariat inscriptions (between 753 and 760) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)
• Choiti-Tamir inscriptions (between 753 and 756) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)
• Sükhbaatar inscriptions (8th century) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)
• Bombogor inscription (8th century) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)
• Book of Divination (9th century) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)

See also

• Old Turkic script
• Proto-Turkic
• Orkhon Turkic
• Old Uyghur
• Karakhanid language

References

1. Rachewiltz, Igor de; Rybatzki, Volker (31 May 2010). Introduction to Altaic Philology. BRILL. p. 17. ISBN   9789004188891.
2. Rachewiltz, Igor de; Rybatzki, Volker (31 May 2010). Introduction to Altaic Philology. BRILL. p. 19. ISBN   9789004188891.
3. Erdal, Marcel (September 2004). A Grammar of Old Turkic. BRILL. p. 8. ISBN   9789047403968.
4. Robbeets, Martine; Savelyev, Alexander (27 May 2020). The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages. Oxford University Press. p. 106. ISBN   978-0-19-880462-8.
5. The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages. p. 413.
6. Robbeets, Martine; Savelyev, Alexander (27 May 2020). The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages. Oxford University Press. p. 112. ISBN   978-0-19-880462-8.
7. Ragagnin, Elisabetta (May 2020). "Major and Minor Turkic Language Islands in Iran with a Special Focus on Khalaj". Iranian Studies. 53 (3–4): 573–588. doi:10.1080/00210862.2020.1740881. S2CID   218924277.
8. Johanson, Lars; Csató, Éva Á. (29 April 2015). The Turkic Languages. Routledge. p. 280. ISBN   9781136825279.
9. Dwyer, Arienne M. (2007). Salar. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 49. ISBN   9783447040914.
10. Studies in Asian Historical Linguistics. BRILL. 19 July 2021. p. 209. ISBN   9789004448568.
11. Khalid, Adeeb (January 1999). The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform. University of California Press. p. 188. ISBN   9780520920897.
12. Scharlipp, Wolfgang (2000). An Introduction to the Old Turkish Runic Inscriptions. Verlag auf dem Ruffel, Engelschoff. ISBN   978-3-933847-00-3.
13. Sinor, Denis (2002). "Old Turkic". History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Vol. 4. Paris: UNESCO. pp. 331–333.
14. Johanson, Lars; Csató, Éva Á (29 April 2015). The Turkic Languages. Routledge. p. 85. ISBN   978-1-136-82527-9.
15. Erdal, Marcel (2004). A grammar of Old Turkic. Boston: Brill. p. 88. ISBN   1-4294-0826-X. OCLC   73959547.
16. Dwyer, Arienne M. (2007). Salar. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 61. ISBN   9783447040914.
17. Irregularities in Turkic Languages. p. 228.
18. Robbeets, Martine; Savelyev, Alexander (27 May 2020). The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages. Oxford University Press. p. 113. ISBN   978-0-19-880462-8.
19. A Grammar of Old Turkic. p. 177.
20. Heritage and Identity in the Turkic World. p. 42.
21. A Grammar of Old Turkic. p. 180.
22. A Grammar of Old Turkic. p. 160.
23. A Grammar of Old Turkic. p. 158.
24. Johanson, Lars, ed. (2021), "Nominals: Noun Inflection", Turkic, Cambridge Language Surveys, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 452–478, ISBN   978-0-521-86535-7 , retrieved 2024-10-13
25. Micro-change and Macro-change in Diachronic Syntax. p. 64.
26. A Grammar of Old Turkic. p. 272.
27. Studies on Turkish and Turkic Languages. p. 203.

Further reading

• Noten zu den alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei und Sibiriens (1898)
• Ö.D. Baatar, Old Turkic Script, Ulan-Baator (2008), ISBN   0-415-08200-5
• M. Erdal, Old Turkic word formation: A functional approach to the lexicon, Turcologica, Harassowitz (1991), ISBN   3-447-03084-4.
• M. Erdal, Old Turkic, in: The Turkic Languages, eds. L. Johanson & E.A. Csato, Routledge, London (1998), ISBN   978-99929-944-0-5
• M. Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic, Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 8 Uralic & Central Asia, Brill, Leiden (2004), ISBN   90-04-10294-9.
• Erdal, Marcel (1 January 2004). A Grammar Of Old Turkic. BRILL. ISBN   90-04-10294-9.
• L. Johanson, A History of Turkic, in: The Turkic Languages, eds. L. Johanson & E.A. Csato, Routledge, London (1998), ISBN   0-415-08200-5
• 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), ISBN   0-7007-0869-3.

External links

• Old Turkic inscriptions (with translations into English), reading lessons and tutorials
• Turkic Inscriptions of Orkhon Valley (with translations into Turkish)
• VATEC, pre-Islamic Old Turkic electronic corpus at uni-frankfurt.de.
• A Grammar of Old Turkic by Marcel Erdal
• Old Turkic (8th century) funerary inscription (W. Schulze)
• Kuli Chor inscription complete text
• Tonyukuk inscription complete text
• Kul Tigin inscription complete text
• Bilge Qaghan inscription complete text
• Eletmiš Yabgu (Ongin) inscription complete text
• Bayanchur Khan inscription complete text
• Ongin inscriptions by Gerard Clauson
• Timeline of Turkic Languages (Turkish)