The Formation of the Crimean Tatar Literary Language in the 15th–17th centuries

Abstract

Research objective: Linguistic analysis of the Crimean Tatar language in official documents against the backdrop of the literary and written traditions of the Golden Horde, a polity to which the Crimean ulus belonged for quite a long time. Research materials: The yarlik of the Crimean khan, Bora Gaza Girey, which we transliterated and translated into Russian, is used as an illustrative text. The language of this yarlik makes it possible to analyze the lexical and grammatical changes in the written language of the Golden Horde which occurred in Crimea under local and Ottoman dialectical influences. Being subjected to changes of this kind, the Golden Horde’s Türki can already be defined as having shifted to the Crimean mixed-Türki of the stated period. The study of the language of the Crimean khans’ yalriks and the parallel study of the language of other Crimean official documents provide an accurate picture of the language processes in the Crimea during the period of the Crimean Khanate, not only at the level of written language, but also at the level of the spoken one. Results and novelty of the research: The efforts of the author on the analysis of the Crimean variant of the Türki language were undertaken for the first time in Turkic studies. As a result, the author revealed not only the substrata of the Ottoman, but also the local Oghuz-Kypchak dialect, recorded in the Codex Cumanicus.