The word-formation potential of affixes in the ancient Turkic runic texts

Abstract

In the era of the Old Turkic Khaganates, a full-fledged structure of the Turkic word was formed in the runic language. Historical relics of the protoTurkic protoforms are still preserved in the root morphemes: primary roots, verb-nominal syncretism, and sound-phonemic variability of roots. In the language of runic monuments the corpus of service morphemes after the root – the affixes – was quite well developed, so there was a quite well developed system of morphology and derivation in the Proto-Turkic language. These service morphemes can be functionally classified as formative and wordformative. The purpose of the article is to reveal the functions and meanings of Old Turkic word-formation affixes. The basic unit of affixal word-formation is a word forming component, in which the formal semantic connection between the generating and derivative stems is determined by semantic motivation. In the case of direct motivation, the meaning of a derived word is formed from the meanings of the generating word and the word-forming affix. The affixes involved in word formation have a word-forming function, and their word-forming meaning is determined by the system-forming function. The author shows the diversity of word-formation meanings. The meanings of old Turkic affixes survived in the modern Turkic languages.

Keywords

• runic inscriptions, language, root and functional morphemes, wordforming component, word-formation act, functions and meanings of word-formation morphemes, the old Turkic worldview