Once Again about Allomorphism of the Plural -lar in Turkic Languages

Abstract

. Introduction. The article continues the discussion of isogloss types and their relevance for the Proto-Turkic reconstruction and reconstruction of the intermediate nodes of the Turkic family tree. Goals. The paper makes another attempt to reconstruct the morphophonological appearance of some affixes for intermediate languages-ancestors of the standard Turkic group (Oguz, ‘Kyrgyz’, Altai, Karluk, Toba, Kypchak). The study draws into consideration not only the plural affix *-lar, but in general inflectional and derivational affixes starting with *-l. Materials and Methods. Methods of stepwise reconstruction are used simultaneously with morphophonological methods of identifying classes of positions and distribution of classes of allomorphs. Field records of dialects, dialectological publications, both modern ones and those of the 19th century, as well as written monuments were used as research material. Results. Both modern field data and classical sources, with the correct application of the methods of stepwise reconstruction, point that affixal *-l has no alternants in proto-Oghuz, protoKarluk and proto-Qypchaq. All instances of alternation in modern idioms like dialectal Bashkir, dialectal Kazakh, ‘Qyrghyz’ languages, Yakut-Dolghan and Toba languages are to be classified as recent areal innovation. This is deduced due to the nature of morphophonological rules in these languages — neither is applyable for the proto-Common-Turkic stem auslaut, but instead is limited to forms that are specific to each separate group in question.

Keywords

• turkic languages
• dialectology
• kipchak languages
• oghuz languages
• morphophonology
• written monuments
• areal linguistics
• dialectal continuum
• historical phonetics
• morphonological reconstruction