A Grammar of Chagatay Andras J. E. Bodrogligeti Languages of the World/Materials 155 2001 LINCOM EUROPAPublished by LINCOM EUROPA 2001. All correspondence concerning Languages of the World/Materials should be addressed to: LINCOM EUROPA Freibadstr. 3 D-81543 Muenchen [email protected] http://home.t-online.de/home/LINCOM.EUROPA www.lincom-europa.com All rights reserved, including the rights of translation into any foreign language. No part of this book may be reproduced in any way without the permission of the publisher. Edited by Ulrich J. Liiders Printed in E.C. Printed on chlorine-free paper Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP Cataloguing-in-Publication-Data A catalogue record for this publication is available from Die Deutsche Bibliothek (http:/Avww.ddb.de) ISBN 3 89586 563 X to ElizabethIf I relight the lantern of the empire no one ever should be amazed since, as you, lords, full well know, through me the dying candle of the House of Chingis flares up again. I am the dawn of felicity rising from the [Eastern] sky of Chingis. When I breeze by [gently and bringing good news] like the [morning] wind, the candle of Timur goes out as I pass._ [Muhammad Shaybani Khan]Acknowledgments The project called “The Chagatay Language”, in the course of which this and several other works were produced, was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. The author gratefully recognizes the distinction and generous support by the Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Many of the direct sources [text editions with translations, grammatical notes, glossaries, and research papers] were prepared in the framework of two major projects: “Islam Among the Turks of Central Asia” and “Ahmad Yasavi, a Major Source of Central Asian Sufism”, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of the research trips to libraries, field works were made possible by grants from the Academic Senate of UCLA, the Institute of Turkish Studies, the International Research and Exchange Board, and the Turkish Language Institute [Ttirk Dil Kurumu], Ankara. I am grateful for the cooperation of depositories of Turkish manuscripts: the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, the British Museum, London, the Orhan Library, Bursa, Suleymaniye and Nuruosmaniye Collections, Istanbul, and the Collection of the University of Language, History, and Geography, Ankara. They opened their doors for my research and readily provided me with copies of manuscrips I requested. Introduction 0. Socio- and geolinguistic data. An acrolect of the Central Asian Turks from the fourteenth to the late nineteenth century, the Chagatay language was a multilayered literary idiom employed in Transoxiana, Khorasan, Fergana and East Turkistan, especially in cultural centers such as Samarkand, Bukhara, Herat, Khiva, Kokand and Kashghar. Chagatay was also used in India in the court of the Great Moguls, in Kazan, in the Crimea, and even in the Ottoman Empire. Today it is regarded as the Classical phase of Modern Uzbek although the extent of Chagatay, especially of its lexicon, was much broader than what the term Classical Uzbek would imply. It was also more detached from the modern idiom with much less dialectal variations, which follows from its standardizing role due to serving as a common literary idiom for a number of language communities.0.1. Present status The Chagatay language is not in active use. With the emergence of national languages in the region [Uzbek, Kazak, Kirghiz, Karakalpak, Tatar, and Bashkir] and the progress of literacy in the native tongues, along with the rise of national awareness among these peoples, it lost its significance as a common literary idiom of the Turks of Central Asia. Yet we cannot call Chagatay an extinct language. Its basic structure and most of its special grammatical traits continue to exist in the mentioned modem Turkic idioms. Since there were no purist or secularist language reforms to cut out Arabic and Persian elements from the vocabulary, Chagatay has remained very close to the modern dialects especially through its paremiologic content which constitutes an essential part of the cultural heritage of the Central Asian Turks. Governments of the Newly Independent Republics recognize the cultural need to maintain awareness of the Chagatay heritage among their subjects. The Uzbeks, for example, made it a law to introduce the study of the Arabic writing system on high school level for the students to obtain direct access to the values of the classical [i.e., Chagatay] literary heritage preserved in the Arabic script. Other republics may soon follow the Uzbek example when they realize that it is in their national interest. 0.2. Relevance Chagatay is the language in which a great variety of written records created between the Fourteenth and the Nineteenth Centuries have been preserved: chronicles, didactic [mostly Islamic] treatises, collected works of many poets, stories of the lives of the saints, glossaries, grammatical studies, extensive memoirs, translations of commentaries on the Qur’an and the Traditions reflecting the literary life of a region which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the scene of a remarkable historical- cultural phenomenon called the scene of Central Asian renaissance. These works are indispensable sources for many areas of scholarship: religion, history, social history, literature, folklore, historical linguistics, lexicography and lexicology to mention but a few. They serve as direct evidence of the achievement of human intellect, effort, and resolve from a period of more than five hundred years. There is a vast amount of knowledge, data, and other valuable information in these faded, worn out manuscripts. Being familiar at least with some of them could be one’s entry ticket to the study of Central Asia directly, on the basis of primary sources. 0.3. Availability More than half of the existing Chagatay works are still in manuscript form available only in archives or in private collections. The majority of known Chagatay manuscripts are in excellent condition. Quite a few, however, are damaged and hard to read. Not all the archives are readily accommodating if you want to get access to manuscripts in their custody. Published works vary from reproductions in facsimile to printed text editions. Early facsimile editions are sometimes difficult to work with due to less perfect production technology. Printed text editions come either in popular form or in carefully established texts with an apparatus criticus, essays, notes, translations and glossaries. Most early text editions were printed in the Arabic script. In the middle of the twentieth century arguably for lower printing costs, texts started to appear in transcription or tansliteration. Transliterations represented all characters and diacritical marks of the original. Transcriptions restored the phonemic shape of the text on the basis of historical-comparative principles. No uniformity was achieved in transliteration or transcription. Modified versions of the Latin or the Cyrillic writing systems were employed with variations depending on the leading schools of Turkish Studies or the authority of individual scholars. During the Soviet period Uzbeks published Chagatay texts in their adapted Cyrillic system. After Turkey introduced a new alphabet for their literary idiom based on Latin, Chagatay texts also were published with the new Turkish alphabet. It does not differ much from the alphabet this book is using. 0.4. Chagatay Literacy As a common idiom among the peoples of Central Asia Chagatay was not the only means of literary expression. Arabic and Persian were at times much in vogue especially in scholarly prose and court literature. Chagatay works emerged and flourished where there was a special need for them: in the court of Turkish dignitaries for high style literature and in teaching Islam to nomads and semisedentary peoples for popular style used in didactic works, translations or original compositions. Knowledge of the language was maintained and furthered by. interlinear translations. grammars and lexicons. Behind the learned literature there was a rich and carefully preserved tradition of folk literature with unique examples of epic poetry. The paremiologic riches of Chagatay testifies to the existence of popular wisdom manifest in proverbs, idioms, and set expression.The cultural content of the Chagatay literacy reflects an Islamic milieu which accounts for the abundance of Persian and Arabic elements in the language and in the literary expression. Arabic was in high rank because it was the language of the Qur’an while Persian was the idiom of a highly impressive literature. It was the vocabulary of Islam and its literary expression that was borrowed into Chagatay. As far as_ the lexicon is concerned the borrowed elements substantially enriched the Chagatay word stock and increased its expressiveness. Foreign genres widened the range of literary forms. As can be expected in a region dominated by Islam, most of the surviving written records are works of religious literature. Treatises on Islamic topics and manuals to teach the essential duties of the believer. Most prominent among these are Islam's Mu ‘nu’! murid, the first known Central Asian Turkish manual for dervish novices, Muhammad Shaybani Khan’s Risala-i Maarif, a handbook designed for the subjects of the Mongolian prince’s conceptual Uzbek Islamic Empire, Risala-i Validiya, a treatise by Muhammad Zahiru’ddin Babur on the emulation of the Prophet Muhammad. Dervish literature is also widely represented. By way of examples the works of Gada‘i, Lutfi, Shah Mashrab, and, from the early period, poets in Sayf-i Sarayi’s anthology can be mentioned. In court literature the lyrical nama genre, a sequel of masnavis interlaced with ghazals, was developed. At least four of such works have come down to us. Among them the Dahnama of Yusuf Amiri excels both in intricacy of style and sophistication of content. The so-called contest poems (munazara) have also a few fine representatives, such as Yusuf Amiri’s The Bhang and the Wine, Yaqini’s contest of the Arrow and the Bow, and Ahmadi’s A Contest of the String Instruments, Ghazals, verses of lyrical- panegyric inspiration on religious or secular themes, collected in Divans are numerous. The collections of Mir Alisher Nava?i, Husayn Baygqara, Zahiru'd-din Babur, and, for its less sophisticated but informative content, Muhammad Shaybani Khan should be mentioned among the many. Qasidas, panegyric poems dedicated to the Supreme Being, to a patron or extolling the beauty of nature, occur mostly as integral part of other genres. Less frequently they are unattached in a collective works. Of the former Yusuf Amiri’s gasida to the Timurid Baysunghur, of the latter Shaybani Khan’s Bahru’l-huda are typical examples. Epic poetry mostly deal with legends known from Persian literature. Mir Alisher Nava’i’s Khamsa, a set of five epics produced in emulation (nazira) of Nizami’s set of five epics is among the highlights of Chagatay literature. Memoirs and chronicles, for example Zahiru’d-din Babur’s Memoirs (Babur-nama),Muhamad Salih’ schronicle of Muhammad Shaybani Khan 5 (Shaybani-nama), Abu’l-#azi Bahadur Khan’s histories (Shajara-i turk and Shajara-i Tarakima) and many others are important sources of history and cultural heritage of Central Asia. We also have works on the lexicon (farhang) and grammar of the Chagatay languague of which Mirza Mehdi Khan’s Sanglah, a grammar and vocabulary of the Turkish language in Persian is the most famous, 0.5. Status of Research in Chagatay Many manuscripts of works of major importance have survived from the Chagatay period. About sixty percent of the existing manuscripts have been researched, translated, and published. Although differing from one another in editorial objectives and textological principles, most major works have been made available to the scholarly or general public. The impact these works have made on various branches of scholarship or on different layers of the society, however, is rather modest. The recognition they obtained in the international arena is not in proportion with the significance they represent. Indeed, the potentials of literary works in the Central Asian cultural heritage have not been fully exploited, or even identified. One of the reasons for this disproportional appreciation has been the purely philological interest in the surviving works. They were used as sources to supply materials for various branches and phases of historical linguistics. The philological trend, naturally, had its own values. It was instrumental in establishing solid principles in textual criticism and lexicography which led to precisely processed text editions, glossaries and lexicons. Comparatively much less attention was paid to the content. In Turkish scholarship the twentieth century was the age of philology, the backbone of research and scholarly output. The first major centers of Turkic [including Chagatay] studies emerged outside Turkey [Russia, Finland, Hungary, Germany, France]. Since late thirties, however, this discipline became firmly established in Turkey itself and has made substantial headway since. The main concern in this period was about manuscripts, their discovery, identification, and exploitation mostly for lexicographic purposes. Many primary sources were published and quite a few research tools were created for the interested audience. The initially so obvious lack of interest in the content of classical works did not expand proportionately with the technical progress and conceptual refinement of text publications. Philology, originally a method of discipline in research and precision in presentation outgrew its bounds and became art per se. So facsimile editions, transcriptions, and glossaries of classical texts were prepared, often each in separate volumes. The6 glossaries were beefed up with numbers indicating the place of occurrence of every single lexical element, including conjunctions, auxiliaries and other frequently used items, But, very often, no translation was prepared and no thorough content analysis was made. For example, from the Nahcu’l-faradis, a book of hadith from the fourteenth century and one of the sources of religious learning of the Central Asian Turks we have a facsimile edition published in 1956, a transcription volume, with no date, but sometimes after 1976, and a bulky word index from 1998. It took two generations of scholars to create these fine volumes. But we still don’t have a translation of Nahcu’l-faradis into a modem language or a cultural-historical assessment of its content. Future research must expand in this direction and make the Turkish literary heritage directly accessible to a broader international audience. There are sufficient basic research tools available for the study of the Chagatay language. Pavet de Courteille’s Chagatay dictionary, Zenker’s Turkish-Arabic-Persian dictionary, Budagov’s comparative dictionary of Turkish and Tatar dialects, Kazemzade’s four volume Turki dictionary and, specifically for Persian-Arabic loans, Steingass’s Persian dictionary and a number of wordlists to text editions or glossaries prepared from the word materials of native vocabularies [farhang] help in researching the Chagatay lexicon. For a concise overview of Chagatay philology and grammar Eckmann’s Manual is at the sudents’ disposal which contains a reader with a Chagatay-Turkish glossary. For a morphological and etymological survey Brockelmann’s Middle Turkic grammar does a good service. The present grammar draws on a wider range of primary sources expanding the boundaries of Chagatay both horizontally and vertically. This follows from the author's intent to treat the Central Asian classical literary heritage as a homogeneous entity that allows for historical phases and territorial variations but does not admit of dissecting it into artificially delineated “languages” bound to historical periods or geographical areas. The question the author was faced with was whether to treat Khorazmian Turkish, the literary idiom of the fourteenth century, as a separate language, leave it out of consideration in this volume and do or leave it to others to create a grammar of Khorazmian Turkish. The difference, however, between the language of the fourteenth century Central Asian documents and of those from later centuries is so little, summed up by Eckmann in a few points of sound changes or case form variants, that does not warrant or even admit of establishing a separate grammar. Efforts to do so would result in illustrating the same phenomena with materials from primary sources from a different time period.. Among the skills to learning Chagatay familiarity with the Arabic writing system and its different styles and a fair knowledge of classical Persian and literary Arabic are the most important. To appreciate the Chagatay sources themselves, especially poetry, some level of erudition in Islam and, most of all, in Sufism is needed. Since these works were created in Central Asian cultural milieu, the more one knows about the Islamic heritage of Central Asia, the closer one gets to a full understanding of Chagatay works. This is especially true in reading high style literature where the Paremiotic content is often burdened with conventional elements of Arabic-Persian versification. This book will help the students also in this respect by giving illustrations with translations in full grammatical and Prosodic segments and providing explanatory footnotes where it seemed necessary. 0.6. Chagatay and the Modern National Languages. The four major nationalities in Central Asia--Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, and Turkmen--and the Tatars in the Russian Republic claim Chagatay as more or less part of their heritage. Insofar as Chagatay was an acrolect in the region, there is some entitlement to this claim. Linguistically and historically, however, Chagatay belongs to the Uzbeks. Although it would be going too far calling it “Old Uzbek”, as it was attempted during the Soviet period, Chagatay, with all its essential features, has become has an essential part of modern literary Uzbek. This was partly the result of Uzbek scholars’ effort to integrate Chagatay grammatical and lexical elements into their modern idiom. An educated Uzbek today can easily read Chagatay works. The Uzbek government plans to keep it that way. The Supreme Council’s decision to change the Cyrillic writing system into a new Latin-based alphabet mandated that in high schools the Arabic writing system be taught so that students can get direct access to Chagatay works, the oldest elements of their cultural heritage. 0.7. Literary Sources used in this Book. Consistent with the principle to treat Chagatay as a cultural-historical entity embracing works from as early as the fourteenth century and covering all social levels of the language, source materials for this grammar have been selected from a broad area. With this we come closer in concept to Brockelmann’s Osttirkishe Grammatik although we do not include Karakhanide and Mamluk-Kipchak works into our survey due to their overwhelming linguistic and to some extent cultural differences. By this we will not exclude the works of Sayf-i Sarayi, the author who,8 although moved to Egypt, represented in his poems and in his Turkish translation of Sa‘di’s Gulistan the language and culture of Central Asia. Yes, there are dialectal differences in details, mostly in morphology, and traces of historical developments through centuries, mostly in the sound system. These are, however, not significant enough for us to speak of separate languages on their account. Brockelman’s definition of the sources he used as those of ‘the literary languages of Central Asia’ does not refer to a multitude of languages but rather to cultural centers with some or substantial degree of literacy. This view is supported by the fact that he covered them all with one grammatical description. Eckmann in his Chagatay Manual set up very narrow boundaries for Chagatay. We have to consider, though, that his intent was to provide a handbook for students of high style Chagatay literature from the period of the Central Asian renaissance. Primary sources for this book come from all layers of the language from different historical periods. The popular tone is represented by legends and didactic works (e.g., The Story of Ibrahim, Baraq-nama, Mugqaddimatu "s-salat), by dervish literature (e.g., the Hikmats of Ahmad Yasavi and Halis), learned narrative prose by treatises, chronicles and memoirs (e.g., Yazdi’s Zafarnama, Shaybani Khan’s Risala-i Ma ‘arif, Muhamad Salih’s Saybani-nama, Muhammad Zahiru’d-din Babur’s Babur-nama, Nava?1’s Muhakamatu'I-lugatain), learned poetry by divans of religious or secular inspiration (such as the poems of Lutfi, Gada?i, Muhammad Shaybani Khan, Muhammad Zahiru’d-din Babur, Husayn Bayqara, Mir Data in Bibliography10 Rabg. RB RM Sayf Sang. ShD Shayb.V Steingass Vamb. Csp. Zaj. Zam. Zenker ZN Rabguzi, Qisasu’l- anbiya Babur Shah, Risala-i Validiya_ Shaybani Khan, Risala-i Ma Grif Sayf-i Sarayi, Gulistan bi’ t-turki Clauson, Sanglah Shaybani Khan, Divan Vambéry, Die Scheibaniade Steingass, Persian-English Dictionary Vambéry, Cagataische Spr ‘achstudien Zajaczkowski, jstarsza_ wersja tur (iv Qutba. III, Slownik Yiice Nur, ZamaliSar?, Mugaddimatu' l-adab Tiirkisch-arabisch-persisches Handworterbuch Yazdi, Zafarnama (MS) = vVVANNAAN © Cel GGG eur The Arabic-Persian Alphabet aa oT , web Pp Se ' ob 8 J Cc Caz é h e~ cle b tu c a sls Zz po ‘ ve ° oy z asis at bab pak bat salis bore saé silah bar raz Zala fas bass a horse door clean fast third debt hair weapon horn justice recollection go secret dew bowl stone particular12 Ge °CROULG CHM & EG. we bs es é>2 é'> lo gl+ Sl Sp Jb rls ob ol, oly a) Numbers & F 5 6 bayaz batt hazz vada‘ damag saf bak barg bal dam nan rah ravan yar VA white writing pleasure farewell brain pure vault fear leaf honey roof bread road soul friend 13 1. ORTHOGRAPHY Chagatay works were mostly written in a slightly modified version of the Arabic script. Arabic and Persian loan elements were spelled according to their Arabic or Persian orthography, differentiating between short and long vowels by the use of matres lectionis: (alif, waw, and yod]. In Turkish words, on the other hand, there was a tendency to mark all vowels by their equivalent Arabic characters, rather than diacritical marks, a criterion that makes Chagatay differ from Ottoman where diacritical marks were preferred in this role. The generous use of matres lectionis enables the reader to distinguish between rounded and unrounded vowels. There are no direct indicators for the reader to identify front and back vowels in Turkish graphemes where they play a distinctive role. Many Chagatay works are available today in facsimile editions or in Arabic prints. Most Western Turcologists of the twentieth century would print their Chagatay texts in Latin or Cyrillic-lettered transcriptions or transliterations making the texts more transparent for the reader and less costly for the publisher. By the second half of the twentieth century in some countries transcription of Chagatay texts became a genre and had a cult of its own. In this book the transcription developed by the Hungarian school of Turkic studies is used. On the basis of data provided by Turkish historical linguistics, this transcription gives full value to vowels and consonants not marked as such in the Arabic script. 2, PHONOLOGY 2.1. Vowels Chagatay has nine short and five long vowels. The short vowels are: a, i, e, i, i, 0, 6, u, ii two of which [o and 4] are of limited distribution.’ The long vowels are a, i, u [in Arabic and Persian words] and € and 0 [in Persian words‘). Chagatay has no diphthongs as individual phonemes. The sequence of a vowel + wor y [e.g., in mavki‘ ‘place’] is regarded as the occurrence of a vowel with a consonant. > They do not occur in suffixes and case endings. * This reflects the early stage of Classical Persian. In New Persian these vowels changed into >i and 4, in Modem Persian, into > i and u. Tajik retained the classical values of these phonemes, which also show in most Iranian loans in Modem Uzbek. This is one of the characteristic traits that keeps Chagatay closer to Uzbek.14 2.1.1. Classification of Vowels , , , ; Chagatay vowels can be classified according to the point of articulation, [velar and palatal], the line of the lips [labial and illabial] and the opening of the mouth [open, medial, and close] during the articulation. The velar [back] vowels are: a, i, Ou a, OU The palatal [front] vowels are: a,e,i,6,u e, I The labial [rounded] vowels are: o, 6, u, ii The illabial [unrounded] vowels are: a, a, e, i, i The open vowels are: aad . The medial vowels are: €0,6 | The close vowels are: i, i, u, i 2.1.2. The Distribution of Vowels : , Some of the Chagatay vowels are restricted in their occurrence.The long vowels do not occur in words of Turkish origin. The vowels a, u, 1 belong to Arabic and Persian words only. E.g., ahu (P) n. ‘deer’, afat (Ar) De ‘misfortune, ‘calamity’, tulu‘ n. ‘rising [of the sun, moon, or the stars']’, The vowels 0 and e, occur only in Persian elements. E.g., meva n. ‘fruit’, roza n. ‘fast [a religious duty]’. The medial vowels 0, 6 and e occur only in the first syllable of Turkish words: etak n. ‘skirt’, kézgii n. ‘mirror’, orun n, ‘place’. Vowels are generally followed by a consonant, except in open syllables in final position. Two vowels occur adjacently only in Arabic words when a hamza between two vowels is not reflected in the pronunciation. E.g., taammul [< ta’ammul] n. ‘hesitation, caution’, taassuf [< ta’assuf] n. ‘grieving’. If one of the vowels, _Separated by a hamza, is i or i, the hamza is replaced by a -y-. E.g., riyasat [< ri’asat] n. ‘government’. 2.1.3. Vowel Harmony . A vowel in the first syllable dominates the vowels in the rest of the word making them conform to its characteristics. The result is a group pressure: a vowel of the labial group must be followed by syllables with vowels in the labial group. Vowels in the back vowel group must be followed by syllables with back vowels. 5 Or one’s fortune. 15 There are two types of vowel harmony: palato-alveolar, and labial- illabial. 2.1.3.1. Palato-alveolar Harmony The palato-alveolar harmony requires that a word contain either palatal or velar vowels. Derivative and possessive suffixes, the sign of the plural and inflectional endings must comply with this rule. It has to be noted, however, that the Arabic orthography does not directly reveal the nature of vowels in suffixes. [There are no special characters for back or front vowels. An alif can represent an a or a, a waw can stand for an u, ii, 0, or 6, and a yod for an i or i]. Only the consonants g, q and g, k in the suffix can give us a hint as to whether a vowel is palato-alveolar or velar. E.g., cihan-da ‘in this world’, ev-da ‘in the house’, sézli-mak ‘to speak’, angla-maq ‘to understand’, tiiS-tiing ‘you fell’, bajla-di ‘he tied’, kit- gali ‘since I left’, qil-gan-lar ‘those who made’, kel- a came’. The palato-alveolar harmony is rather consistent in Chagatay, as far as the application of suffixes is concerned. With Arabic and Persian loans, however, words with disparate vowels joined the lexicon and created plenty of exceptions to the rule of vowel harmony in base words. E.g., hicran ‘separation, absence from home, or from the beloved’, betara ‘miserable’, mutrib ‘entertainer’, mihrab ‘prayer-niche’, munasib ‘appropriate’. 2.1.3.2, Labial-illabial Harmony Labial-illabial harmony occurs in theTurkish word material in base words as well as in suffixes. It is not as widespread as the palatal-alveolar harmony: There are restrictions in both segments. In base words, if the initial syllable containing a round vowel is followed by a closed vowel, that closed vowel can only be a rounded close vowel [u or it, depending on the palatal-alveolar harmony]. E.g., orun ‘place’, ogul ‘son’, isriik ‘drunk’, yurun ‘patch’, yosun ‘method, manner’, ulug ‘big, great’, uyqu ‘sleep’, tiitiin ‘smoke’, unut- ‘to forget’, iziim ‘grape’, ordu ‘camp’. As far as suffixes are concerned, the labial harmony is not always operative: There are suffixes that comply with the vowel harmony. E.g. the first and second persons singular and plural of the definite past tense: sordum ‘I asked’, sordung ‘you asked; kérdik ‘we saw’, kérdiingiiz “you saw’, the first and second persons of the singular possessive suffixes: kéziim ‘my eye’, yiiziing ‘your face’, quium ‘my bird’, qulung ‘your servant’, the first syllable of the first and second persons of the plural possessive suffixes: qolumiz ‘our hand’, qoSunungiz ‘your army’.16 There are suffixes that do not comply with the labial-illabial harmony. E.g., the third person singular and plural of the definite past tense: sordi ‘he asked’, kordi ‘he saw’, kérdilar ‘they saw’, urdilar ‘they beat’; the accusative marker -ni/-ni: gulni ‘rose’ (accusative), dliimni ‘death’ (accusative); the ablative case marker -din/-din: quidin ‘from the servant’, tiitiindin ‘from the smoke’; the third person possessive suffix. singular and plural: uyqusi ‘his dream’, kiinlari “his days’. There are suffixes with labial vowel only. E.g., The first person plural suffix of the definite past tense: berdiik ‘we gave’, qilduq ‘we made’; the interrogative particle -mu/-mii: qaytti-mu ‘Did he return?’, kelgay- mii ‘Witl he come, I wonder’; the gerund [verbal adverb] -gunéa/-giinéa: qaytgunéa ‘until returning’, yetgiinéa ‘until arriving’. 2.2. Consonants Chagatay has twenty seven consonants. The Arabic alphabet does not always indicate the exact value of some of the consonants. The value of such consonants is established on historical evidence, systemic constraint, and phonetic characteristics of modern Turkic languages, especially Kazak and Uzbek. 2.2.1. Classification of Consonants The Chagatay consonants are divided into stops: ptkq bdg‘ spirants: fsibh vzzg affricates: éc liquids: rit nasals: mng semivowels: uy 2.2.2. Distribution of Consonants There is a restriction on the use of consonants especially in words of Turkish origin. The following rules apply: (a) The phoneme 9 may not occur in initial position. (b) The phonemes ¢ % and ‘ do not occur in words of Turkish origin. (c) The phonemes f8hvzg%e‘l do not occur in initial position of words of Turkish origin. (d) Initial n- is found only in the interrogative pronoun ne ‘what’ which often occurs with et-, ayla- ‘to make’ with its vowel dropped. (e) Final -d and -b do not occur in words of Turkis origin. (f) Long consonants are rare and occur only in medial position. (g) Consonant clusters do not occur in initial position. 17 3. Mo 3.1. Nouns RPHOLOGY Nouns constitute a rich, colorful and articulate category. They include the names of people, their social relationships, activities, tools, weapons, thoughts, ideas, and other cultural values, physical features of their habitat, the animal world, plants and natural phenomena. In relationshi to verbs nouns are a more or less closed category due to the boundaries between nominal and verbal elements of the lexicon. They constitute, also, a most heterogeneous category because of the unrestrained lexical borrowing from languages of higher cultural prestige, such as Arabic and Persian. The boundaries between nouns and verbs are bridged over b: methods of nominal or verbal derivation. There are only a few words common in both categories without nominal or verbal derivative elements. E.g., kiraS ‘fight’, and kira8- ‘to fight’. Word structure. phonemic make-up and prosodic potentials differ according to the source language.The presence of foreign elements upset the traditional vowel harmony, expanded the prosodic structure of lexical elements and changed the distribution of consonants. By their structure Chagatay nouns are sii ivati hyphenated Ee, y imple, derivative, compound, and Simple nouns taZ ‘mountain’ suw ‘water’ san ‘number’ elig ‘hand’ temiir ‘iron’ Derivative nouns seviiné ‘joy’ [ when you come to the presence of that wretched person] give him the fetter right away and convey my greetings.’ ‘asavvur mantiqin ¢on qildi tasdiq, bitidi namae lutf ilé ta‘liq. (DN246v: 1) “When she confirmed the logic of imagination, she wrote a letter in fine ta‘liq script.’