LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

The Place of Dimitri Kantemiroglu... 75
typical ottoman sentence, with its optative ola ‘to become’ and eyleye ‘to
act, to do’:
bizim muradımız budur ki zira efken makamlı yalngız sureta makam ola
ve bir makamıng perdeleri ile hareket idüb sair makamın nagmesini ve
sadasını icra eyleye…
however, except for a few examples, such as kangı ‘which?’,
with respect to the language of the work it can be said that the archaic
characteristics of the period before 1453, referred to as the old Anatolian
turkish, do not exist. In other words, the language of the text is modern.
yet this modernity is relative with respect to the previous period.
the whole of the text is loaded with conjunctions, such as çün, kaçan,
and the like, all of which are almost never used today, with different uses,
such as degme hâl, gayet ile, and the like, and syntactical structures in the
style of persian compound sentences. Bilmiş ol ki, öyle ki are characteristic
conjunctions for Kantemir and the author uses them frequently.
In short, it is obvious that Kantemiroglu’s knowledge of ottoman is
perfect.
It is known that the author wrote works in latin, Greek and russian,
other than those in his mother-tongue romanian. Edvar is his only work in
turkish. nevertheless it is observed that the multifaceted and multilingual
Kantemiroglu also possesses skills in advanced Arabic and persian, like
other turkish intellectuals of the period. throughout the work, there are
replications from the Arabic, such as book titles, words, and phrases, which
do not even add up to a sentence. Section headings are in persian, in line
with the ottoman tradition. yet these headings are usually simple phrases
composed of a few words. As is well known, persian holds a special
place in the Classical ottoman music and poetry tradition. In the Edvar
of Kantemir, persian lyrics also take place, besides the persian headings.
Composing music to persian lyrics, by taking into consideration meaning
and pronunciation, doubtlessly requires an advanced knowledge in persian
(For persian lyrics, see tura 2001: 99).
Compared with today’s turkish, Kantemiroglu’s expression and style
are archaic with respect to the density of the Arabic and persian elements,
like the language of other contemporary works, and comprises too many
turkish grammatical elements. In fact, it could easily be stated, although
this may seem to be a radical opinion, that stock expressions and most
of the sentence structures in the work are not in use today. In a country
such as turkey, which implemented language reform in the 1930s, the
archaic nature of the language of a work written three centuries ago is