A Study of Turkic Languages in Peripheral Eurasia

欧亚大陆边缘地区的突厥语族语言表现出许多中央突厥语族主要语言所不具备的特征。在这个研究项目中，我们的目标是获得关于周边突厥语的异质性的具体数据，这迄今为止还没有引起学术界的兴趣。我们对维吾尔语、图瓦语、撒拉语、萨日格-尤古尔语、雅库特语、多尔干语、乌兹别克语、加告孜语等语言进行了田野调查，覆盖中国、蒙古、俄罗斯、中亚、土耳其和保加利亚。通过田野调查，我们已经清楚地表明，周边的突厥语言，以及方言，接受语言的影响trorn周围的非突厥语言，这种不同的影响可能会导致他们的异质性除了这些主要的发现，我们还发现了迄今未知的世纪雅库特语言材料，这可能是阐明多尔干语是如何由基本的雅库特成分与雅库特周边语言的非突厥成分形成的重要线索。该项目对突厥语族语言研究的另一个具体贡献是获得了新疆西南部的额努语、黑龙江章的扶余柯尔克孜语和蒙古西部的“昌都”维吾尔语等研究较少的语言的第一手语言材料。根据该项目的研究结果，应组织另一个项目，调查突厥语和非突厥语之间语言接触现象的每一个具体案例，特别是关注外国语言元素的“本地化”过程。

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.