A Study of Turkic Languages in Peripheral Eurasia

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Turkic languages spoken in the peripheral area of Eurasia show many characteristics that major central Turkic languages do not have. In this research project our objective was to obtain concrete data about the heterogeneity of peripheral Turkic languages, which has attracted little academic interest so far. We carried out fieldwork on such languages as Uyghur, Tuva, Salar, Sarig-Yoghur, Yakut, Dolgan Uzbek and Gagauz, covering China, Mongolia, Russia, Central Asia, Turkey and Bulgaria. Through the fieldwork we have made clear that peripheral Turkic languages, as well as dialects, accepted linguistic influence trorn surrounding non-Turkic languages and that such various influence could cause their heterogeneity Besides these principal findings, we have also found so far unknown nineteenth century linguistic material of Yakut, which could be an important clue to clarify how the Dolgan language was formed from the basic Yakut elements with non-Turkic elements of the languages around Yakut. Another concrete contribution of this project to the general study of Turkic languages is firsthand linguistic material of such least investigated languages as Eynu in Southwest Xinjiang, Fuyu Kirgiz in Heilongzhang and Uyghur of 'Chanto' in West Mongolia. Based on the findings of this project, another project should be organized to investigate each concrete case of language contact phenomenon between Turkic and non-Turkic languages especially focusing on 'localization' process of foreign linguistic elements.