Names of Cereals in the Turkic Languages - Wydział Filologiczny UJ

Rye || jadygan 77languages:Küär.: jadygan aryš, jatkan, jatkan aryš || Oyr.: jadagan || Sag.: čadagan, jadygan ||Šr.: čadygan, jadyganetymology: 1969: VEWT: < jat- ‘to lie’commentary:The etymology proposed in VEWT is semantically plausible but it has some weaknesses,too:– for:– semantics: Rye, being a weed, has more fragile stems, and ripens faster thancereals, thanks to which its seeds scatter very early, even before the harvest. Thus,on a field where wheat and rye grow together, broken rye stems are visible quiteclearly among wheat. (Nowiński 1970: 178)– against:– suffixation: Generally, the suffix used here has a form -gan, not -Vgan, and isconsistently attached to nominal, not verbal, bases in the names of animals andplants. (Poppe 1927: 116; Frankle 1948: 55f.).– distribution: If -gan was indeed the suffix used here, Küär. would be the onlylanguage to preserve its original form. This is not very likely since Küär. is nota peripheral language and it does not preserve such old forms very often.The possibility exists, however, of a partial defence against the objection fromthe point suffixation: the appearance of -y- (-a- in Sag. čadagan is surely secondary(< *čadygan) and results from the not fully clear alternation of a ~ y) could havebeen caused by an analogy to quite numerous derivates in -gan(a) from roots endingin -y. They are also common in the Mo. languages which influenced quite heavilythe Tkc. languages with the -y- forms: cf. Mo. üni-jen < üni-gen ‘cow’, kulu-gana‘mouse’ (Poppe 1927: 116). Besides, -a- in Sag. čadagan, too, could be explained byan analogy to Mo. forms such as kila-gana ‘a species of steppe grass’, üne-gen ‘fox’,teme-gen ‘camel’ (Poppe 1927: 116). This is probably how the Brb. form küʒügän‘eagle’ came into existence: < küc ‘eagle with a white tail’ (Frankle 1948: 55f.).Still, this defence does not explain why such a derivate should be made froma verbal, and not a nominal, stem. In theory, one could assume that an unknownnominal *jat was in fact the base, and it would not be an unacceptable assumptionas this is actually the case with most names of animals and plants with the-gan suffix, cf. Poppe’s opinion (1927: 116): ‘Was dieses Suffix -γan ursprünglichbedeutete und welche Funktion es hatte, ist unbekannt, da entsprechende Stämmesonst in der Sprache nicht vorkommen’.Perhaps the unknown *jat could be identified with Čag., Kar., Oyr., Tat., Uyg. jat ‘foreign,strange’ R III 190b? Then the meaning would have to be something like ‘foreigncereal’. Unfortunately, it seems to be impossible to determine when the Sag., Šr. andKüär. became acquainted with rye. 4949 Although it seems to be at least possible to say for Küär. that the words jatkan ~ jadygan must beolder than aryš, i.e. older than perhaps the 17 th c. (or maybe even older?). This is not, however,