Reflection of XI-XII century Turkic ehtnographism in the dialects of the modern Turk and Azerbaijani languages

Abstract

Language is the historical memory of a nation. The information that various historical-lexical layers of the language involve, indicates the past and the present, living style, the society and its layers which it shapes. One of these lexical layers is dialects. The fact of keeping features and characteristics of words in the process of turning to dialects while transferring from active dictionary to the passive one, make dialects the main source of both historical and modern literal language. Each dialect inculcates its conservatism and specific language features to new words. This tendency leads to the existence of the properties which are standardized or gradually lost, and also the properties that existed historically.The main role of dialects in historical development of the language emerges in the process of exploring ethnographic words. We can get precise information relating to XI-XII centuries’ Turkic ethnographisms using dialects in contemporary languages. Besides saving historical meaning of words, in dialects, it is also observed creation of additional meanings.The word “ayak” used in the meaning of pot by XI-XII centuries’ Turks, is noted using a°ya°k phonetic composition as bowl, glass in Uzbek language, in khami accent of Uygur language it is used as “wooden cup”. In modern accents of Turkic language we can come across this word in both its meaning used in XI century, and also semantic version of Uzbek language. While using as “pan or basin” in the suburbs of Konya, Afyon provinces, it is also used as “bowl” in Istanbul-Yeniköy, in some villages of Tokat and Sivas “ayak” means “tea cup”. In these accents “ayak” does not earn only ambiguity, but also homonymic. In the Compilation Dictionary of Turkic language 7 homonyms of “ayak” is accentuated. At the same time, the word of “ayakçu” which are used in meanings of copper basin in Gumushane region, is also derived from “ayak”. According to V. Aslanov, “ayak” were massively used in Azerbaijani language until the end of XVII century, then was oppressed by Iranian synonyms and entered to the passive glossary of the language. Not all the XI-XII centuries’ ethnographisms were survived in contemporary dialects. Some words continue existence approximate similarity of their meanings as a part of other words or phrases. For example, “agı” which is mentioned by Kashgari as “decorated silk cloth” is currently not used in its initial meaning. Based on the facts that in some villages of Afyon, Eskisehir and Ankara provinces the word of “ağı çalık” defines the name of the trousers that women wear, or “agılı” means one of the cotton sorts in Afyon, we can come to this conclusion that all these words were formed on the semantic area of “agı”. Consequently, in spite of the fact that ethnographism reflect so much ancient language layers, they continue their existence in dialects and they turn to the proof the historicity of the language and its dialects. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n22p310