Post by hjernespiser on Mar 22, 2010 9:34:49 GMT 3
Hrm, no previous thread on this subject...
Just some highlights from Marcel Erdal's "A Grammar of Old Turkic"
Archiphonemes: These capitalized letters represent the possible sound (phoneme) outcomes that result from the rules of Old Turkic vowel harmony. It makes it easier than writing out a handful of the same suffix with different vowels.
Possession
He concludes that these possessive suffixes and personal pronouns cannot be connected.
Case
Just some highlights from Marcel Erdal's "A Grammar of Old Turkic"
Archiphonemes: These capitalized letters represent the possible sound (phoneme) outcomes that result from the rules of Old Turkic vowel harmony. It makes it easier than writing out a handful of the same suffix with different vowels.
- /X/ can be realized as i, ï (ı), u, ü, and sometimes o, ö. Apparently these weren't always written in the runiform script. I'm not going to go into more detail than this. It gets too complex. ;D
- /I/ -> i, ï
- /U/ -> u, ü (o, ö before /k/)
- /A/ -> a, ä
Possession
- | singular | plural |
1st person | +(X)m | +(X)mXz |
2nd person | +(X)ŋ ~ +(X)g | +(X)ŋXz ~ +(X)gXz, +(X)ŋXzlAr |
3rd person | +(s)I(n+) | +(s)I(n+), +lArI(n+) |
He concludes that these possessive suffixes and personal pronouns cannot be connected.
Case
- Nominative: No case markings
- Genitive: +(n)Xŋ, Qarakhanid has a dissimilative variant +nXg, Orkhon Turkic a different dissimilative variant +Xn appearing after /ŋ/. We find +nUŋ in two Manichaean hymn titles.
- Accusative: +(X)g replaced by pronomial accusative suffix +nI in the latest Uyghur sources.
- Dative: for substantives is +kA in all varieties and stages of Old Turkic. +kA is today found only in Khaladj. +gA, which can be assumed to have existed in early Turkic beside +kA because of Oguz and Bolgar-Chuvash +A, is exceedingly weak in Old Turkic. Old Turkic has no +A or +yA dative.
- Locative: +dA also serves in ablative use in the earlier part of our corpus.
- Ablative: +dIn in most Uyghur sources. The variant +dAn, today found everywhere except modern Uyghur, is attested in preclassical and/or Manichaean texts. The vowel of +dAn may have been taken over from the locative suffix +dA by analogy, or, conversely, the most common variant +dIn may have come about secondarily, through influence by the orientational siffux which has a similar shape when not rounded (in other words, either +dIn or +dAn is older and they're not sure which).
- Instrumental: +(X)n in runiform and most Manichaean instances, but other sources have +(I)n.
- Equative: +čA, unstressed presumably in Old Turkic
- Directive: +gArU, signifying "towards" is very much alive for both nominals and pronouns both in Orkhon Turkic and Manichaean texts but is not too common in the rest of Uyghur. The scarcity of +gArU in Buddhist Uyghur and Qarakhanid Turkic can be explained as a reduction of the case system, but another explanation is possible as well: The shape of the directive is identical with the vowel converb of denominal +gAr- verbs and may well come from it. A third possibility is that the directive came from a contamination between petrified converbs and the pronominal dative in *+gAr; note that Tuvan has (or had in the last century) such directives as buruŋɤar 'forwards; to the east', soŋɤar 'back; to the west' and kuŋɤar' towards the sun'.
- Directive-locative (partitive-locative) +rA We find it is öŋrä 'to the front, kesrä 'to the back, taşra 'outside', içrä 'inside', asra 'below'.
- Similative +lAyU
- Comitative +lXgU is rare and early
- Orientational formative +dXn Not a case suffix in a strict sense.