The verb alar- and Its Derivatives in the Testimony of the Historical Turkic Texts
Hasan İsiHistorical Turkic texts, starting from Orkhon Turkic and progressing on the basis of Eastern and Western Turkic until the 20th century, contain daily vocabulary on many conceptual areas, especially religious teachings. Turkic languages developed as a result of cultural and religious changes and have been represented for centuries by literatures under the influence of Manichaeism, Buddhism and Islam. The present study consists of evaluations of the verb alar- and its derivatives, which mean “to dazzle, to blush, to catch leprosy” in Eastern and Western Turkic. The verb alar-, which was first witnessed in Old Uyghur Turkic, is a cognitive verb that has taken place in the minds and literary languages of the people who speak the Turkic language from the 10th century to the present day. Alar- is a word related to the conceptual field of “seeing/looking” and has been seen in new words during historical periods by taking various morphemes in line with the derivational power of the Turkic language. In this respect, the study first traces alar- and its derivatives in historical texts, processes examples of the relevant phrase in terms of language, and reveals the appearance of the verb alar- and its derivatives on the basis of both etymology and linguistics. In addition, the study show the verb alar- to have experienced contamination in both Eastern and Western Turkic due to the influence of the verb alart-, and instead of having two different meanings in a single article, it became represented by homophonic structures. Here the study attempts to determine the boundaries of the conceptual area of the verb alar- by taking into account the meanings of the word during both historical and modern periods.
Tarihî Türkçe Metinler Tanıklığında alar- Fiili ve Türevleri
Hasan İsiOrhon Türkçesinden başlayıp 20. yüzyıla kadar Doğu ve Batı Türkçeleri temelinde ilerleyen tarihî Türkçe metinler, bünyesinde başta dinî öğretiler olmak üzere birçok kavram alanına dair söz varlığı unsurlarını barındırmaktadır. Kültürel ve dinsel değişimler sonucunda gelişen Türk dilleri, yüzyıllar boyunca Manihaizm, Budizm ve İslam dininin etkisindeki edebiyatlarla temsil bulmuştur. Eldeki çalışma, Doğu ve Batı Türkçelerinde “göz kamaşmak, kızarmak, cüzzama yakalanmak” anlamlarına gelen alar- fiili ve türevlerine dair değerlendirmelerden oluşmaktadır. İlk kez Eski Uygur Türkçesinde tanıklanan alar- fiili, 10. yüzyıldan günümüze kadar Türk dilini konuşan halkların zihinlerinde ve edebî dillerinde yer edinmiş bir idrak fiilidir. “Görme/bakma” kavram alanıyla ilişkili bir kelime olan alar-, tarihî dönemlerde Türk dilinin türetme gücü doğrultusunda çeşitli biçimbirimler alarak yeni kelimelerle görülmüştür. Bu yönüyle çalışmada öncelikle alar- ve türevlerinin tarihî metinlerde izi sürülmüş, ilgili ibareye dair örnekler dil açısından işlenerek alar- fiili ve türevlerinin sahip olduğu görünüm hem köken bilgisi hem de dil bilimi temelinde ortaya konmuştur. Ayrıca incelemelerde hem Doğu hem de Batı Türkçesinde alar- fiili, alart- fiilinin tesiriyle anlam bulaşması yaşamış, tek bir maddede iki farklı anlama sahip olması gerekirken eş sesli yapılarla temsil edilir duruma gelmiştir. Burada kelimenin hem tarihî hem de modern dönemlerdeki karşılıkları göz önüne alınıp alar- fiiline dair kavram alanının sınırı belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır.
The historical Turkic languages come from the writing system that has developed chronologically up to the 20th century from Orkhon Turkic, with the Turkic language first being documented in writing. The historical Turkic languages developed primarily in the course of cultural and religious changes and have been represented for centuries by literatures based on Manichaeism, Buddhism, and Islam. Turkic languages have vocabulary examples based on various conceptual areas, especially religious terms, and as a result of centuries of Buddhist and Islamic culture, they contain a wealth of products, especially with regard to Buddhism and Islam.
The historical Turkic languages had been represented by the Uyghur written tradition until the 13th century and developed with the Mongol invasion based on the concepts of Eastern and Western Turkic before reaching the 20th century. Eastern Turkic began with Khwarazm Turkic, continued with Kipchak and Chagatai Turkic, and is now represented by written languages such as Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Tatar, Uzbek, and New Uyghur. This writing tradition is based on the Orkhon, Uyghur, and Karakhanid writing traditions. Meanwhile, historical Western Turkic had begun with old Oghuz Turkic and ended with Ottoman Turkic; it is represented today by languages such as Turkish, Turkmen, and Azerbaijani Turkic.
In the literature on Turkology, religious vocabulary in particular has been successfully put forward with various studies in recent years. In this respect, the present study consists of evaluations of the verb alar- and its derivatives, alar- being the act of perception within the concept of “seeing/looking” in historical Eastern and Western Turkic. While this verb falls under the category of “seeing/looking” as a mental verb, it basically means “to blush, to redden” as a verb expressing color and has gained various connotations accordingly. The study attempts to identify the verb alar- and its derivatives with the basic meaning of “to blush, to redden” in the testimony of historical and modern Turkic languages with the aim of revealing the appearance of the expressions.
The present study is based on the verb alar- and its derivatives as first witnessed in Old Uyghur Turkic. The scope of the study involves both historical and modern Turkic languages. The study benefits from the texts of Old Uyghur, Karakhanid, Khwarazm, Chagatai and Old Anatolian Turkic. These languages constitute the corpus of the study and are important in terms of showing examples that reflect the appearance of the verb alar- and its derivatives.
The study has identified the verb alar- and its derivatives with the help of both historical texts and dictionaries of modern Turkic languages, revealing the periodic view of the verb and its derivatives through the opinions of various names and making explanations about the verb and its derivatives. The study has not just left the information obtained about the verb alar- and its derivatives as raw information but has interpreted it through its desire to show the linguistic situations that were experienced. The study includes witnessed examples and meanings of the verb alar- and its derivatives and updates the meanings and derivatives that have not been included in dictionaries. Finally, by putting forward various origin proposals for the word, the study processes the morphological expansions of the verb alar- and its derivatives based on linguistic plausibility before presenting an origin proposal for the word.
The study has presented three origin proposals for the verb alar- that have been traced to various languages belonging to historical and modern Turkic languages. The study discusses each origin proposal within itself before finally suggesting that the verb had been formed from the +(A)r- morpheme on the word al [red]. The verb alar-, which is represented by the forms alart-, aları, alaru, and alardu in historical periods, has the basic meaning of “to blush, to redden,” and depending on the usage areas of the verb, it has also achieved the meanings of “to dazzle, to cause leprosy, to look with eyes wide open, to look hard and stare, to look carefully, to appear (vaguely).” The verb’s particular meanings of “to open one’s eyes wide, to look hard and stare, and to look carefully” are due to the meaning contamination that occurred with the verb alart-. In linguistics, contamination at the level of sound and meaning is generally interpreted as the emergence of an average form through the effect that two words have on each other. The contamination seen in both historical and modern periods of the Turkic language is also observed in the verb alar-. The alar- verbs this study has witnessed in the Derleme Sözlüğü have a homophonous structure.
When considering the appearance of the word in historical texts, the predominant case is that alar- had been represented by a single lexical unit. Until Chagatai Turkic, the verb alarhad generally been used in the sense of “to dazzle the eye; to blush; to turn red; to redden; to be reddened,” but its meanings of “to look attentively” and “to look hard” only appear for the first time in Chagatai Turkic. This is due to the meaning of the verb alar- in its passive form alart-. In this respect, alar- (I) and (II), which seem to have two lexical structures, should actually be presented in a single item on the basis of the conceptual field of “red, take,” because instead of considering two homophonous forms of alar- (I) and (II) here with the meaning contamination from the verb alar-t-, showing them in a single item with two different meanings or as a connotation of the basic meaning would be more appropriate.
