BORROWING AS A LINGUISTIC OUTCOME OF LANGUAGE CONTACT ETYMOLOGY OF COLOUR TERMS IN TURKISH

BORROWING AS A LINGUISTIC OUTCOME OF LANGUAGE CONTACT ETYMOLOGY OF COLOUR TERMS IN TURKISH

TÜRKER, Lola

There are universals in semantics of color in (probably) all languages (Berlin and Kay 1969). However, semantics of color may show varieties from oneculture to another depending on factors such as, life-style, climate, history, and socio-political circumstances. Languages in their turn carry traces of all historical changes and socio-cultural development, resulted as a contact with other cultures and languages. Semantics of color terms in Turkish, which this paper explores, presents a wide variety of etymological development which parallels the socio-cultural developments of that period, together with political and demographic factors have led to the linguistic change. The radical changes in the Turkish language mainly emerge after Turks come into contact with other cultures and religions, the most significant among which, their converting to Islam in 7th century. By 10th century, Turks have mainly accepted Islamic culture and shaped their social lives according to Islamic criteria. This significant change in its turn influenced the language, the main source of literature. Taken into account the structural changes in Ottoman Turkish, it can be observed that they appear as a result of contact with Islamic culture and therefore with Arabic and Persian. This exploratory work addresses only basic color terms in which the case of phonological changes and borrowings in color etymology are traced from Proto-Turkic to Modern Turkish period, paying special attention to language contact phenomenon and its linguistic outcomes. In order to carry out this study, online edition of Nişanyan Etymological Dictionary of Turkish Language has been used. Data has been retrieved from online web site of the dictionary (http://www.nisanyansozluk.com). By tracing the etymology of basic color terms in Turkish: black, white, red, yellow, green and blue, it is attested that four, out of six basic color words used in Modern Turkish today, have been borrowed from Arabic or Persian. This can be explained as a case of cultural diffusion and language contact of Turkish with those languages. Although Turkish has been in the spin of change all throughout its history, most of the changes took place starting from Middle Turkic period, and the highest number of borrowings are incorporated during the Ottoman Turkish period. Not only lexical features and vocabulary, but also structural and morphological elements of other languages are adopted into Ottoman Turkish.

Article
PeerReviewed

ISSN 2303-582X

International Burch University

2014-05-23

2683