A GRAMMAR OF OLD TURKIC MARCEL ERDAL LEIDEN BRILL 2004

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CHAPTER ONE
conceived of as including Orkhon Turkic as well as runiform mss. and
Manichæan texts retaining /ñ/ such as the Xw, and two distinct “but
closely related” Uygur dialects, “Uygur” and “Uygur-A”. The EDPT’s
‘Uygur’ covers not only what is generally called by this name but also
the runiform inscriptions inscribed in Mongolia during the Uygur
Steppe Empire; Uygur-A was defined by the lowering of high vowels
referred to in section 1.2. Kondrat’ev 1973, Tuguševa 1974, Tenišev
1976 and Blagova 1977 discuss the differences between Orkhon Turkic
and Uygur and try to answer the question whether these are dialects or
different languages.
Erdal 1976: 10-48 (published with minor changes as Erdal 1979) dealt
with a set of linguistic characteristics of Old Turkic diachrony as
distinct from external characteristics such as palæography, content,
explicit dating or the appearance of the document (e.g. whether it is a
ms. or a block-print, the latter appearing only under Mongol domination
in the 13 th century). The paper lists a number of linguistic criteria which
can serve for placing texts into older or younger strata of the language,
while Zieme 1981 and Bazin 1991 are concerned with extra-linguistic
dating. Erdal 1979 thought that the appearance of the runiform letter ñ
or the spelling NY in other writing systems is older than the change of
/ñ/ to /n/ or /y/ though Zieme 1969: 173-182 had already stated that
Manichæan texts could have a fluctuation between NY and N. Röhrborn
1983 thought that fluctuations should be taken to be merely graphic. He
suggested they should not be seen as a critical criterion for classifying
texts, the Maitrisimit consistently having ñ > y but, on the other hand,
most of the other criteria for including it into one group with the texts
which either write NY or N for /ñ/. In a text showing both NY spellings
and N or Y variants instead of that, the N or Y instances should, he
proposes, like NY also be read as [ñ]. The same premiss could also lead
one to the opposite conclusions: That the scribe knew the words were
supposed to be pronounced with [ñ] but let his own pronunciation,
which was [y], interfere with spelling which reflected conservative
practice. Other scholars have also thought about this free alternation:
Hamilton (in a note to KP) wondered whether there was dialect mixing;
below we quote the opinions of Arat and Laut on the question.
Tenišev 1979 developed the theory, subsequently found reiterated by
a number of Soviet scholars like also Kondrat’ev 1981, that Old Turkic
was a written language which was wholly distinct from the languages
and dialects actually spoken by the scribes: These latter could, he
thought, have been closer to the earlier stages of modern languages.
Erdal 1985 shows that alternants existing side by side in the QB and