TURKIC-IRANIAN CONTACTS ii. CHAGHATAY
TURKIC-IRANIAN CONTACTS ii. CHAGHATAY
Chaghatay has been strongly influenced by Islamic prestige languages, especially Persian and Arabic, in all segments: phonetics, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, and cultural content. In the hands of the educated elite it became a tool wielded impressively to create exquisite literary works that won the admiration of contemporary Iranian and Arab men of letters.
TURKIC CONTACTS Chaghatay Language
This Turkic language is a multilayered, lexically rich, and grammatically complex literary idiom. It belongs to the Altaic group of the Uralo-Altaic language family. It is an agglutinative language that creates grammatical and lexical derivatives by suffixes attached to base forms: e.g., qayt- “to return” (intransitive), qaytur- “to return” (transitive), qayturma- “not to return,” and qayturmayım “I don’t feel like returning;” or at “horse,” atlar “horses,” atlarım “my horses,” and atlarımγa “”to my horses.” Chaghatay has distinct remnants of palatal and labial harmony in the phonemic system because base words contain either back vowels (e.g., qara “black”) or front vowels (e.g., tevä “camel”). Bases with back vowels are followed by suffixes with back vowels (e.g., qaralamaq “to blacken”), and those with front vowels are followed by suffixes with front vowels (e.g., tevälärdän “from the camels”). However, Persian and Arabic loans do not follow this pattern.