Lars Johanson

Hendrik Boeschoten

The volume contains contributions on contact-induced language change in situations in which one of the languages is a Turkic one. Most papers deal with cases of long-standing language contact. The geographic areas covered include the Balkans (Macedonian Turkish, Gagauz), Western Europe (Turkish-German, Turkish-Dutch contacts), Central Europe (Karaim), Turkey (Turkish-Kurdish, Turkish-Greek contacts, Old Ottoman Turkish), Iran (Turkic-Iranian contacts) and Siberia (Yakut-Tungusic contacts). The contributions focus on various phenomena of code interaction and on various types of structural changes in different contact settings. Several authors employ the Code Copying Model, which is presented in some detail in one of the articles.

Turkic Languages in Contact

Éva Á. Csató

The Turkic Languages examines the modern languages within this wide-ranging language family and gives an historical overview of their development.The first part covers generalities, providing an introduction to the grammatical traditions, subgrouping and writing systems of this language family. The latter part of the book focuses on descriptions of the individual languages themselves. Each language description gives an overview of the language followed by detail on phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis and dialects. The language chapters are similarly structured to enable the reader to access and compare information easily. Each chapter represents a self-contained article written by a recognised expert in the field. Suggestions are made for the most useful sources of further reading and the work is comprehensively indexed.

The Turkic Languages

Martine Irma Robbeets

The term Transeurasian refers to a large group of geographically adjacent languages stretching from the Pacific in the East to the Mediterranean in the West. They share a significant amount of linguistic properties and include five linguistic families: Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic. There is disagreement among scholars on the question whether these languages are genealogically related in the sense of an "Altaic" family. Many linguists, however, seem to agree on at least one point, namely that investigations into the striking correspondences in the domain of verbal morphology could substantially help unravelling the question. The present volume brings together prominent specialists in the field who explore potentially shared features of verbal morphology among the Transeurasian languages and search for the best way to explain them. Important issues dealt with include the following: How useful is verbal morphology really in establishing genealogical relations among languages? Is there concrete evidence for cognate verbal morphology across the Transeurasian languages? Is it possible to draw wider connections with Indo-European and Uralic? How to distinguish between genealogical retention and copying of verbal morphology? In which ways can typological similarities be significant in this context?

Genealogy, Contact, Chance

Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective

The Turkic languages are spoken today in a vast geographical area stretching from southern Iran to the Arctic Ocean and from the Balkans to the great wall of China. There are currently 20 literary languages in the group, the most important among them being Turkish with over 70 million speakers; other major languages covered include Azeri, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Noghay, Tatar, Turkmen, Uyghur, Uzbek, Yakut, Yellow Uyghur and languages of Iran and South Siberia. The Turkic Languages is a reference book which brings together detailed discussions of the historical development and specialized linguistic structures and features of the languages in the Turkic family. Seen from a linguistic typology point of view, Turkic languages are particularly interesting because of their astonishing morphosyntactic regularity, their vast geographical distribution, and their great stability over time. This volume builds upon a work which has already become a defining classic of Turkic language study. The present, thoroughly revised edition updates and augments those authoritative accounts and reflects recent and ongoing developments in the languages themselves, as well as our further enhanced understanding of the relations and patterns of influence between them. The result is the fruit of decades-long experience in the teaching of the Turkic languages, their philology and literature, and also of a wealth of new insights into the linguistic phenomena and cultural interactions defining their development and use, both historically and in the present day. Each chapter combines modern linguistic analysis with traditional historical linguistics; a uniform structure allows for easy typological comparison between the individual languages. Written by an international team of experts, The Turkic Languages will be invaluable to students and researchers within linguistics, Turcology, and Near Eastern and Oriental Studies.

Éva Ágnes Csató

Turcology in Mainz has been pursued as general and comparative Turcology. The 49 contributions to this conference reflect this interest and include titles on the history and linguistic structure of both Turkish and other Turkic languages. The main focus of the volume is on Turkish linguistic issues. A number of studies indifferent modern linguistic frameworks deal with Turkish morphological structures, communicative functions and referentiality, the function and syntax of converbs, thecategory of voice. Discussions on the structures of relative clauses constitute an important part of the volume. Other fields of studies represented include language acquisition, dialect studies, language policy, contact linguistics, computer linguistics, stylistics and applied linguistics. The volume will be invaluable to students and researchers within the fields of Turcology, linguistics, linguistic typology, contact linguistics, Near Eastern and Oriental Studies.

Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Turkish Linguistics, August 3-6, 1994

The Mainz Meeting

Bo Utas

The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

Turkic, Iranian and Neighbouring Languages

Evidentials

Christiane Bulut

International conference proceedings, Mainz, 1997 and 1998.

Historical and Linguistic Aspects

Turkic-Iranian Contact Areas

Turkic is one of the world's major language families, comprising a high number of distinct languages and varieties that display remarkable similarities and notable differences. Written by a leading expert in the field, this landmark work provides an unrivalled overview of multiple features of Turkic, covering structural, functional, historical, sociolinguistic and literary aspects. It presents the history and cultures of the speakers, structures, and use of the whole set of languages within the family, including Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Tatar, Kazakh, Uzbek, and Uyghur, and gives a comprehensive overview of published works on Turkic languages, large and small. It also provides an innovative theoretical framework, employing a unified terminology and transcription, to give new insights into the Turkic linguistic type. Requiring no previous knowledge of the Turkic languages, it will be welcomed by both general readers, as well as academic researchers and students of linguistic typology, comparative linguistics, and Turkic studies.

Turkic

Irina Nevskaya

Lidia Federica Mazzitelli

This volume is a collection of articles dealing with the linguistic category of possession and its expression in languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia (Uralic, Turkic, Indo-European and Caucasian), with a few excursions into other parts of the world. Some papers engage in typological comparisons, both within and beyond the borders of individual language families focusing on issues of motivation; meaning and forms used in expressing possession; typology of belong constructions; marking possession in possessor chains; non-canonical possessives and their relation to the category of familiarity; metaphoric shifts of possessive semantics. Others focus on possession in individual languages, offering new precious pieces of information on the linguistic expression of possession in lesser known languages, some of which are endangered and even unwritten. The volume will be of interest to both general linguists and typologists as well as to experts/students of the individual languages or language families analyzed in the papers.

Lars Johanson

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