Arabic elements in post-tanzimat literary Turkish with special reference to Hâmİd, Fİkret, Âkİf and Gökalp

Abstract

This study alms to shed light on foreign elements in language in general, and in particular Arabic elements in literary Turkish at a particular period in its history, the so-called post-Tanzimat period. (In Chapter I some basic general characteristics of language are given, and the views of linguisticians on foreign elements in language are discussed. In addition the main characteristics of the two languages are summarized, and a short survey of Arabic elements in pre-Tanzimat Turkish is given. A brief account of the Tanzimat movement in Turkish history concludes the chapter. The second chapter provides biographical background of the four authors on whose works this study is largely based. Their views on language and on Arabic elements in Turkish are given so far as these are known. In the Chapters III and IV some Arabic grammatical factors, which have no direct equivalent in Turkish, or are fundamentally different in Turkish, are discussed and their appearance in Turkish is considered. In Chapter V which is on phonetics, the general views of linguisticians are considered with particular care, as linguistics is usually based on 'spoken language' whereas this study is on 'written language'. Then Arabic elements in Turkish are analysed from the phonetic point of view. In Chapter VI word formation is considered, and the1way in which Arabic elements are used for this purpose in' I Turkish is explained. The most common foreign element in linguistics, direct borrowing, is also mentioned. Chapter VTI deals with semantics: attention is concentrated on the change in the meaning undergone by Arabic words when taken into Turkish. The final Chapter stresses the need for further research into the whole subject and the paucity of basic reference material.