Old Turkic language

Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested form of Turkic, found in Göktürk and Uyghur inscriptions dating from about the 7th century to the 13th century. It is the oldest attested member of the Southeastern (Uyghuric) branch of Turkic, which is extant in the modern Chagatai, Uyghur and Western Yugur languages.

Old Turkic is attested in a number of scripts, including the Orkhon-Yenisei runiform script, the Old Uyghur alphabet (a form of the Sogdian alphabet), the Brāhmī script, and the Manichean alphabet.

Sources

Sources of Old Turkic are divided into three corpora:

• the 7th to 10th century Orkhon inscriptions in Mongolia and the Yenisey basin (Orkhon Turkic, or Old Turkic proper)
• 9th to 13th century Uyghur manuscripts from Xinjiang (Old Uyghur), in various scripts including Brahmi, the Manichaean, Syriac and Uyghur alphabets, treating religious (Buddhist, Manichaean and Nestorian), legal, literary, folkloric and astrologic material as well as personal correspondence.
• 11th century Qarakhanid manuscripts, mostly written in Arabic script (Qarakhanid Turkic). The Qarakhanid corpus includes a 6,500 couplet poem, Qutaδγu bilig "Wisdom that brings good fortune", an Arabic–Turkic dictionary and Mahmud al-Kashgari's "Compendium of the Turkic dialects". This variety is sometimes referred to as Middle Turkic.

Phonology

Old Turkic has nine vowel qualities—a, e, ė, i, ï, o, ö, u, ü—distinct only in the first syllable of a word, collapsed into four classes elsewhere—a, e, ï, i.

The consonantal system distinguishes between unvoiced, voiced (with fricative variants) and nasal:

labial: p, v (β), m;

dental: t, d (δ), n;

palatal: č, y, ń;

velar: k (q, χ), g (γ), ŋ;

sibilant: s, š, z;

liquid: r, l.

Comparison with modern Turkic languages

See also

• Old Turkic script
• Middle Turkic
• Proto-Turkic
• Pecheneg language
• Bulgar language
• Hunnic language
• Cuman language
• Turkic Avar language
• Kipchak language
• Khazar language
• Tuvan language

References

• Ö.D. Baatar, Old Turkic Script, Ulan-Baator (2008), ISBN 0415082005
• M. Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic, Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 8 Uralic & Central Asia, Brill, Leiden (2004), ISBN 9004102949.
• M. Erdal, Old Turkic word formation: A functional approach to the lexicon, Turcologica, Harassowitz (1991), ISBN 3447030844.
• 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); RoutledgeCurzon (1997), ISBN 0700708693.
• L. Johanson, A History of Turkic, in: The Turkic Languages, eds. L. Johanson & E.A. Csato, Routledge, London (1998), ISBN 0415082005
• M. Erdal, Old Turkic, in: The Turkic Languages, eds. L. Johanson & E.A. Csato, Routledge, London (1998),ISBN 978-99929-944-0-5

External links

• Old Turkic (8th century) funerary inscription (W. Schulze)
• VATEC, pre-Islamic Old Turkic electronic corpus at uni-frankfurt.de.
• Old Turkic inscriptions, reading lessons and tutorials
• A Grammar of Old Turkic by Marcel Erdal