Between Linguistic Standardization and Nationalism: Descriptions and Grammars of the Turkish Language from the Late Ottoman to the Early Turkish Republican Era
p. 241-266
Résumés
Grammars published during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire adopted a comparative method that emphasized the similarities between the Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian languages. This is demonstrated by examples such as the Kavaid-i Osmaniyye (“Ottoman-Turkish Grammar”, 1851) of Ahmet Cevdet and Mehmet Fuat, and the Kavâid-i Lisân-i Türkî (“Grammar of the Ottoman-Turkish Language”, 1892) of Tahir Kenan. These texts also demonstrate that grammars published in this period used Arabic terminology and concepts from Arabic linguistics to describe the structure of the Ottoman Turkish language (e.g., sarf for “morphology” and nahiv for “syntax”). Later, the transition between the Late Ottoman and the Early Turkish Republican Eras was marked by the emergence of new trends in Turkish language studies. These included the definition of a theoretical framework that described Turkish with the same concepts and terminology used for the description of languages spoken in Europe. This paradigm shift brought about significant changes in the structure of Turkish language grammars. Manuals published from 1930 onwards, such as the Türk Dilbilgisi Dersleri (“Lessons of Turkish Grammar”, 1936) – by Ahmet Cevat Emre – and the Ana Hatları ile Türk Grameri (“Turkish Language Through its Main Features”, 1940) of Tahsin Banguoğlu use terms and categories from European linguistics, such as “morphology”, “phonetics”, “etymology”, “semantics” (often indicating their French translation in parentheses). In some cases, the authors of these books explicitly state that their approach to grammatical studies aims to describe the features of the Turkish language independently of those of Arabic and Persian. This study examines these grammars in order to retrace the evolution of the structure of grammars of the Turkish language. Furthermore, it seeks to outline the role of European linguistics in the systematization of Turkish linguistics as independent from Arabic and Persian linguistics.
Comme le montrent des exemples tels que Kavaid-i Osmaniyye (« Grammaire du turc ottoman », 1851) de Ahmet Cevdet et Mehmet Faut, et Kavâid-i Lisân-i Türkî (« Grammaire de la langue turque ottomane », 1892) de Tahir Kenan, les livres de grammaire publiés au cours des dernières décennies de l’Empire ottoman suivent une méthode comparative, qui met l’accent sur les similitudes entre les langues turc ottomane, arabe et persane. De plus, ces livres utilisent la terminologie arabe et les concepts de la linguistique arabe pour décrire la structure de la langue turque (par exemple, sarf pour « morphologie » et nahiv pour « syntaxe »). La transition entre la fin de l’ère ottomane et le début de l’ère de la république turque est marquée par l’émergence de nouvelles tendances dans les études de la langue turque telle que la définition d’un cadre théorique décrivant le turc en utilisant les mêmes concepts et la même terminologie que ceux utilisés pour la description des langues européennes. Ce changement de paradigme apporte des changements significatifs concernant la structure des livres de grammaire en langue turque. Des manuels publiés à partir de 1930 tels que Türk Dilbilgisi Dersleri (« Leçons de grammaire turque », 1936) de Ahmet Cevat Emre, et Ana Hatları ile Türk Grameri (« La langue turque à travers ses principales caractéristiques », 1940) de Tahsin Banguoğlu utilisent des termes et des catégories de la linguistique européenne tels que « morphologie », « phonétique », « étymologie », « sémantique » (indiquant souvent leur traduction française entre parenthèses). Dans certains cas, les auteurs de ces livres remarquent explicitement que leur approche de la grammaire vise à décrire les caractéristiques de la langue turque indépendamment de celles de l’arabe et du persan. À travers l’analyse de ces grammaires, l’objectif de cette recherche est de retracer l’évolution de la structure des grammaires de la langue turque. De plus, ce travail vise à souligner le rôle que la linguistique européenne a eu dans la systématisation de la science de la langue turque en tant que branche indépendante de celles de l’arabe et du persan.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : grammaire, langue turque, turcologie, standardisation linguistique
Keywords : grammar, Turkish language, Turkology, language standardization
Texte intégral
Introduction
1Since the Middle Ages,1 the model based on the distinction between morphology (sarf) and syntax (nahw) conceived for the description of the structures of the Arabic language has been used by both professional and amateur Arabic grammarians to describe other languages.2
2Based on a subdivision into nahw and sarf, this grammatical model maintained its hegemony in the cultural and geographical spaces where the Turks settled and, more specifically, in the Ottoman Empire over a long period. Given their cultural, geographic and linguistic proximity, the Ottomans were well acquainted with Arabic language and literature. Moreover – as underlined by Bellino – the study of Arabic grammar (and its subdivision into sarf and nahw) occupied a prominent place in the formation of Ottoman scholars since the 13th century.3 Based on this model, in the 16th century the scholar Kadri of Pergamon4 composed the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm, which was the first grammar of Turkish as spoken and written in the Ottoman Empire.5
3In his introduction, Kadri of Pergamon remarks on the lack of texts concerning the grammar of Ottoman-Turkish. Next, he focuses on the morphological aspects of the Ottoman Turkish language, through an analysis of the concept of the word (kalima) and its subdivisions into verbs (fiil), complements (isim),6 nouns (isim), pronouns (muzmerat), adverbs (zarf), postpositions and particles (harf), using Arabic terminology.
4For a long time, the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm was the only grammar of Ottoman Turkish. As Korkmaz has shown, it is the only grammar of Ottoman Turkish known to have been written between the 16th and the 19th centuries.7 It would only be with the process of reform of the school system in the Ottoman Empire, which led to the introduction of new tools for teaching the Ottoman Turkish language, that the publication of grammars would resume.
5As we will see in this study, in the 19th century the revival of studies on Ottoman Turkish led to the publication of grammars such as the Kavaid-i Osmaniyye (“Grammar of the Ottoman Turkish Language”, 1850) by Ahmet Cevdet and Mehmet Fuat, the Kavaid-i Lisan-i Türki (“Grammar of the Turkish Language”, 1899) by Tahir Kenan, and the Mufassal Yeni Sarf-ı Osmani (“New Detailed Study of the Words of the Ottoman Turkish Language”, 1901) by Şeyh Vasfi. These works adopted a traditional framework, based on the distinction between sarf and nahw inherited from Arabic linguistics, as well as the use of Arabic terminology to refer to grammatical concepts. Furthermore, in the course of analyzing the grammar of Ottoman Turkish, they also sought to outline its similarities with Persian and Arabic.
6As this study will show, a first attempt to analyze the structures of Ottoman Turkish independently of those of Arabic and Persian, made in grammatical treatises such as the Nev Usul Sarf-ı Türki (“New Method for the Study of the Morphology of the [Ottoman] Turkish Language”, 1891) by Şemseddin Sami, the Mükemmel Osmanlı Sarfı (“Complete Study of the Morphology of the Ottoman-Turkish Language”, 1892) by Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat, Türkçe Sarf ve Nahiv (“Morphology and Syntax of the [Ottoman]-Turkish Language”, 1908) by Hüseyin Cahit and the Lisan-i Osmani sarf ve nahiv Dersleri (“Study of the Morphology and Syntax of the Ottoman-Turkish Language”, 1913), was only partially successful. Even though these grammatical treatises introduced some innovative elements to the traditional grammatical model (e.g., the choice to use words and expressions from colloquial Ottoman Turkish in the examples, the analysis of phonetic aspects of the language), they continued to be influenced by the conceptual and terminological framework which had been defined by Arabic linguistics.
7Subsequently, the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in the early 1920s led to significant political, institutional, and cultural reforms. Among these were language reforms aiming to purge Ottoman Turkish of Arabic and Persian influences. This policy first resulted in the adoption of the Latin alphabet to write Turkish (1928), and, later, in an attempt to replace words of Persian and Arabic origin with their Turkish equivalents (1932). The linguistic reforms begun in 1928 also had a significant impact on studies of the Turkish language. It should be noted that scholars working on 20th century Turkish call it Modern Turkish8 or Turkish, thus distinguishing it from the Ottoman Turkish of the pre-Republican Era.
8The period of transition from Ottoman Turkish to Modern Turkish coincided with the publication of the first grammars to succesfully analyze Modern Turkish as an independent vernacular, with distinct features from those of Arabic or Persian. This group includes grammars such as the Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer (“Concise Turkish Grammar”, 1928) published by the Turkish Language Council, the Ana Hatları ile Türk Grameri Kılavuz Kitap (“Manual on the Grammar of the Turkish Language in Outlines”, 1940) of Tahsin Banguoğlu, and the Türk Dilbilgisi (“Turkish Grammar”, 1945) of Ahmet Cevat Emre. This paradigm shift in the description of the language structures of Turkish also corresponds to the adoption of a new linguistic terminology based on neologisms of Turkish origin (e.g., ses bilgisi for phonetics, or yapı bilgisi for morphology), in contrast to the traditional vocabulary borrowed from Arabic linguistic sciences.
9The publication of these grammars was important for the standardization of the Modern Turkish language, and for the definition of Turkology as a science with its own unique fieldwork and features, differing from those of Arabic and Persian.
1. Grammars Written According to Traditional Understanding
10The second half of the 19th century represented a turning point in the history of the Ottoman Empire, witnessing important political and institutional changes. As regards the reform of the education system, intellectuals of the era often stressed the importance of teaching Ottoman Turkish in schools,9 a pressing need which resulted in a demand for new tools to teach the language. Aiming to fill this gap, in 1851 two Ottoman intellectuals – Ahmet Cevdet (1822-1895) and Mehmet Fuat (1815-1869) – published the Kavaid-i Osmaniyye (“Grammar of the Ottoman Turkish Language”).10 This was the first work on the rules of the Ottoman Turkish language since the 16th century Müyessiretü’l-ulûm of Kadri of Pergamon. In the Kavaid-i Osmaniyye, the influence of the traditional Arabic model remains evident from the Arabic linguistic terminology used in the work (e.g., ism-i aded for number, ism-i tasgir for diminutives, fiil for verb, edat11 for postposition and particles). Furthermore, Ahmet Cevdet and Mehmet Fuat analyze grammatical concepts within a comparative framework, aiming to show the similarities between parts of speech in Persian, Arabic and Ottoman Turkish.
11Another feature which inscribes Kavaid-i Osmaniyye within the classical tradition of grammar is the use of examples from the terminology of literature, art, and law throughout the text (e.g., the words zu, zi and their plural zui, used in Arabic with the meaning of “possessor” are sometimes used to express the relation of possession in compound words in Ottoman Turkish: the word zülvecheyn means “(a building) with two facades”, vazı’ul yed, “the person’s hand”. The word zülvecheyn is often used in architecture and art, while vazı’ul yed is often used in both Turkish literary and legal language). It is clear that these examples were not taken from colloquial Ottoman Turkish.12
12The Kavaid-i Osmaniyye inspired the composition of several other grammars for the Turkish language, also incorporating features such as references to the Arabic linguistic tradition, and comparison between the structures of Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian. The work entitled Kavaid-i Lisan-i Türki (“Grammar of the Turkish Language”) – written in Ottoman Turkish by the scholar Tahir Kenan (1863- unknown) in 1899 – represents an example of this trend. Tahir Kenan organized his book into four parts, and each chapter was dedicated to a specific section of grammar, labelled by the author with words of Arabic origin: preface (mukaddime), declaration (ifade), introduction (medhal), letters (harf), syllables (hece),13 words (kelime), and a section entitled “construction” (terkip) where the author explains the function of the grammatical particle called ezafe, which is used in Ottoman Turkish to connect two nouns together, establishing a “possessor and possessed” relationship between the two.14 The final sections of the work focus on discourse (kelam) and punctuation marks (tenkit).15 In the Kavaid-i Lisan-i Türki, every part of speech is defined according to its derivation from the Arabic or Persian language. In the section dedicated to the alphabet, the author describes each letter of the Ottoman-Turkish alphabet according to its derivation from the Arabic or Persian writing systems:
The alphabet of the [Ottoman]-Turkish language consists of twenty-nine letters, and they come from Arabic (the alphabet includes ‘لا’).16 Letters such as ‘پ’, ‘چ’, ‘ ژ’, ‘گ’17 represent an exception since they come from Persian. Indeed, these four letters can be found in the Persian and Turkish alphabets, and they are used in Turkish words.18
13Using the same framework, Tahir Kenan described particles and prepositions (edat) as “words with different meanings in Arabic grammar, [these] can be simple [a, ah, oh] or compound [nasıl, niçin, nitekim]”.19 To better explain the function of each part of speech in sentences, Tahir Kenan offers examples, generally verses from the Ottoman Turkish, Arabic or Persian poetic tradition, thus reinforcing the idea of Ottoman Turkish as a language that shared a cultural and literary heritage with Arabic and Persian. For instance, to explain the function of the preposition binaen (‘due to, because’), Tahir Kenan gives three examples of the use of this preposition in three different literary texts: the Ehl-i Salib Tarihi (“History of the Crusades”, unknown publication date), a theatrical piece by the poet Abdulhak Hamit Tarhan entitled Tarık (19h century), and an untitled poem by Namık Kemal (19th century).20
14In this sense, Kavaid-i Lisan-i Türki should be seen within the context of the Ottoman Turkish linguistic and cultural debate of the late 19th century. There were two main stances in this debate. The first conceived Ottoman Turkish as a language with its own status, and a cultural and linguistic identity independent of Arabic and Persian. The other conceived Persian, Arabic and Ottoman Turkish as a single cultural and linguistic unit.
15According to the supporters of the second position, as the three languages (elsine-i selâse) had shared cultural, political, and geographical spaces for centuries, the analysis of Ottoman Turkish language and grammar could not be separated from an analysis of the influence of Arabic and Persian on the grammatical structures of Ottoman Turkish. As we have seen, the Kavaid-i Osmaniyye and the Kavaid-i Lisan-i Türki were written from this perspective.
16Although both texts were written for use in secondary schools,21 they did not contain any exercises, (drawn from the literary tradition, for example) which would have been of use for putting the grammatical rules explained into practice. Thus these grammars took a theoretical approach rather than aiming to teach the correct use of the rules of the language. Requiring a very good knowledge of all the nuances of the Ottoman Turkish language, they were in fact not suitable for secondary school pupils.
17In partial contrast to this scheme, the Mufassal Yeni Sarf-ı Osmani (“New Detailed Study of the Words of the Ottoman Turkish Language”, 1901) by the poet Şeyh Vasfi (1851-1910) was written according to the principles of the traditional approach to grammar writing, while simultaneously introducing new features. From its first pages, this text consistently uses Arabic linguistic terminology to describe the rules and concepts of Ottoman Turkish grammar. The author organizes his text into the following sections: “letters” (harf), “nouns” (isim), the ezafe particle to express relationships of possession, “adjectives” (sıfat), “construction” (terkip), “demonstrative adjectives” (ism-i işaret), “pronouns” (zamir), “verbs” (fiil), “postpositions” and “particles” (edat) and “sentences” (cümle). If we compare this text to the Kavaid-i Lisan-i Türki of Tahir Kenan, we can see that Şeyh Vasfi adopts a similar approach for the explanation of grammatical concepts as Tahir Kenan. At the same time, he makes numerous references to Persian and Arabic linguistic tradition. For instance, in the section analyzing nouns, he offers many examples and provides an analysis of their etymology and their derivation from either Persian (e.g., zan for “woman”, mard for “men”, şir for “lion”) or Arabic (e.g., muallim for “teacher”, mumin for “believer”).
18As mentioned above, the Mufassal Yeni Sarf-ı Osmani represents a partially innovative approach when compared to the earlier grammars examined above. Its main innovation consists in its choice of examples. Whereas the Kavaid-i Lisan-i Türki made extensive use of examples from the Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish literary traditions, Şeyh Vasfi chose examples from everyday linguistic interactions. In the section analyzing the formation of adverbs from adjectives, examples of adjectives with their corresponding adverbs ağır-ağırca, güzel-güzelce are given.22 In a similar way, to explain the formation of verbal nouns from adjectives, examples from adjectives commonly used in spoken Turkish are chosen: çirkin-çirkinleşmek, topal-topallamak.23
19The use of examples from everyday linguistic interactions would become one of the key features of the grammars written in the ensuing years. These grammars, published between the last decade of the 19th century and the 1910s, represent the first attempts to analyze the grammatical concepts and structures of the Turkish language independently from those of Arabic and Persian. The Nev Usul Sarf-ı Türki (“New Method for the Study of the Morphology of the [Ottoman] Turkish Language”, 1891) of Şemseddin Sami, the Mükemmel Osmanlı Sarfı (“Complete Study of the Morphology of the Ottoman Turkish Language”, 1892) of Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat, the Türkçe Sarf ve Nahiv (“Morphology and Syntax of the [Ottoman Turkish Language”, 1908) of Hüseyin Cahit, and the Lisan-i Osmani sarf ve nahiv Dersleri (“Study of the Morphology and Syntax of the Ottoman Turkish Language”, 1913) of Ahmet Cevat Emre are four representative examples of this trend.
2. The First Attempts Towards an Analysis of Ottoman Turkish as an Independent Vernacular
20The Nev Usul Sarf-ı Türki (1891) of the scholar Şemseddin Sami (1850-1904) and the Mükemmel Osmanlı Sarfı (1892) of the writer Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat (1851-1907) share several aspects as regards their structure and the methodology they choose to employ to explain grammatical rules and concepts.
21The Nev-Usul Sarf-ı Türki contains indications on the nature of this “new” (in the title, the Persian word nev) grammar. In this text, Şemseddin Sami organizes the analysis of parts of speech according to the following order: words (kelime), syllables (hece), letters (harf), nouns (isim), ezafe particle used to express the relation of possession, adjectives (sıfat), pronouns (zamir), verbs (fiil), adverbs (zarf). Even though the terminology he chooses is rooted in the Arabic linguistic tradition, the approach that he adopts in his introduction and his description of grammatical rules was innovative for his time. Notably, throughout the text, he makes extensive use of declensions and chooses examples from informal Ottoman Turkish rather than from texts from the literary tradition.24
22The author begins his analysis of Ottoman Turkish grammar with the concept of the word (kelime), which he sub-divides into smaller units such as syllables (hece) and letters (harf). The phonetic description of each letter in the following pages of the text represents a further innovation, since grammars of Ottoman Turkish written according to the traditional approach did not focus on the phonetic aspects of the language.
23To explain the varying forms of words and their syntactic function in sentences, Şemseddin Sami makes use of the categories of declensions, suffixes, and cases25 in his analysis of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives.
24Furthermore, while writing Nev Usul Sarf-ı Türki, Şemseddin Sami sought to describe Ottoman-Turkish as a language influenced by languages spoken in Europe as well, and not just by Persian and Arabic. For example, in the section he dedicates to the analysis of compound verbs, he refers to loan words from e.g., French and Italian26 which had become part of Turkish and through which it was possible to create compound verbs such as protesto etmek (“to protest”).27
25The Mükemmel Osmanlı Sarfı by Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat displays similar features. In this work, Ottoman Turkish parts of speech are presented in the following order: nouns (isim), adjectives (sıfat), pronouns (zamir), roots (masdar), verbs (fiil), postpositions (edavat) and particles (edat).
26As is the case with Şemseddin Sami’s Nev Usul Sarf-ı Türki, Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat’s grammar begins with a description of the phonetics of Ottoman Turkish according to a distinction between high (sakȋl) and low (hafif) consonants.28 Also as in Şemseddin Sami’s grammar, Rıfat applies suffixes (-lAr) to explain the variations between singular/plural in the structure of a word.29
27The use of suffixes and infixes is consistent throughout the text. As an example, the author lists six suffixes (-m/sIn/-/ -Iz/-sInIz/-lAr) corresponding to the six personal pronouns (“I”, “you”, “he/she/it”, “we”, “you”, “they”) used in the declension of the nominative case in Ottoman Turkish grammar.30 Like Şemseddin Sami, Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat includes exercises in his grammar, with a dedicated chapter for these at the end.
28As mentioned above, the feature that most distinguishes the grammars of Şemseddin Sami and Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat from traditional Ottoman Turkish grammars is their attempt to describe Ottoman Turkish independently of Arabic and Persian. Both authors were involved in the linguistic debate over the standardization of Ottoman Turkish as an independent vernacular from Arabic and Persian. The Nev Usul Sarf-ı Türki and the Mükemmel Osmanlı Sarfı both reflect this cultural backdrop.
29The Nev Usul Sarf-ı Türki makes reference to the structures and features of Arabic and Persian only in order to explain the grammatical rules from these two languages that – due to the long cohabitation of Arabic and Persian speakers and speakers of Ottoman Turkish within the same geographical and cultural sphere – had over time become commonly used in Ottoman Turkish (for instance, some words or expressions, or the use of the ezafe to express relations of possession).
30Given all these remarkable features, the grammars of Şemseddin Sami and Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat represent a turning point in the history of Ottoman Turkish linguistics. The works on the grammar of the Turkish language published after the Nev Usul Sarf-ı Türki and Mükemmel Osmanlı Sarfı, in the first decades of the 20th century, follow the same model while also introducing further innovations.
31The Türkçe Sarf ve Nahv (1908) of Hüseyin Cahit and the Lisan-ı Osmani sarf ve nahiv dersleri (1913) of Ahmet Cevat Emre represent two important examples of these subsequent works. Hüseyin Cahit (1875-1957)’s Türkçe Sarf ve Nahiv (1908) is the first grammar of the Ottoman Turkish language to describes it (in its introductory section) as a language belonging to the Ural-Altaic linguistic family:31
[Ottoman]-Turkish is an agglutinative language belonging to the Ural-Altaic language family. The latter is divided into five groups: Samoyedic languages, Finnic languages, Turkic languages, Mongolic languages, and Tungusic languages.32
32From these few lines, the conceptual framework of the text becomes clear: according to Hüseyin Cahit, Turkish as spoken and written in the Ottoman Empire represents a different language from the languages (Arabic and Persian) with which it has shared a cultural and geographical space for centuries and shares many features with the languages of the Ural-Altaic family,33 to which it belongs.
33Hüseyin Cahit’s book is divided into the following sections: vowels (savait), orthography (imla), punctuation marks (tenkit), languages (elsine), word (kelime), nouns (isim), adjectives (sıfat), pronouns (zamir), verbs (fiil), postpositions and particles (edat), adverbs (zarf), and interjections (nida). Like the grammars of Şemseddin Sami and Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat, the Türkçe Sarf ve Nahiv offers a detailed explanation of the phonetics of Turkish vowels, distinguishing them according to their high (e, i, ö, ü) or low pitch (a, ı, o, u).34
34Hüseyin Cahit wrote his text with the purpose of explaining the rules of Ottoman Turkish grammar to pupils attending Ottoman schools.35 Such a pragmatic approach to the elucidation of the linguistic structures of Ottoman Turkish would not have sat well with the approach adopted by his predecessors. Their historical descriptions of linguistic structures centred on the similarities between Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish rather than on the correct application of grammatical rules. Shifting the focus from a comparative description to one that concentrated on the rules of a single language resulted in a text which attempted to describe Ottoman Turkish according to its own principles and independently of Arabic and Persian. For similar pragmatic reasons, and in a manner analogous to other linguists and grammarians mentioned above, Hüseyin Cahit added exercises to his grammar, as well as lists of words in Arabic accompanied by their equivalent in Ottoman Turkish. The aim of these lists was most likely simply to draw the attention of the learner to the Ottoman Turkish language.
35An increasingly Ottoman Turkish-centred, pragmatic approach also characterizes the Lisan-i Osmani sarf ve nahiv dersleri (1913) of Ahmet Cevat Emre (1878-1961). The structure of this work is subdivided into the following sections: letters (harf), syllables (hece), words (kelime) distinguished according to their Ottoman Turkish, Persian, or Arabic etymology, nouns (isim), adjectives (sıfat), expression of the relation of possession either through the ezafe rule or through possessive suffixes,36 pronouns (zamir), verbs (fiil), nouns (isim), cases (isim),37 adverbs, prepositions (edat), exclamations (nida).
36The author wrote this grammar for primary school pupils. This purpose can be deduced from the work’s structure: texts aimed at improving reading skills, as well as the use of images to explain concepts, highlight the didactic nature of the text.38 In the sections concerning letters and syllables, Ahmet Cevat Emre approaches the phonetics of the Turkish language in a similarly pedagogical manner, and describes the sounds produced by the human voice when saying a word. For example, the section on letters and syllables contains an example of how to read the word kedi (“cat” in Turkish):
When we pronounce the letter ‘K’, first its sound comes from our mouth, then our lips separate, and our chin goes down. The syllable is pronounced as ‘ke’. When we pronounce ‘di’, first a slight sound comes out from our teeth, then – adding more effort – we pronounce the whole syllable as ‘di’.39
37Regarding the structure of the text, after a brief introduction on the Ottoman Turkish language, Ahmet Cevat Emre discusses the concept of word and makes distinctions between words coming from Arabic, Turkish or Persian. He invites pupils to analyze differences in the spelling of Persian and Arabic words by comparing them with their etymology.40
38The combination of the description of Turkish as a language independent of Arabic and Persian and the use of Arabic terminology is a common feature of grammars of Ottoman Turkish written before 1928, when the process of reform leading to the standardization of Turkish as the national vernacular began. This process can be interpreted as an evolution of the idea that Ottoman Turkish was a language independent of Arabic and Persian, with a different vocabulary, and distinct grammatical and syntactical structures. Language standardization, which began as a language reform process, brought about important changes in the method and the terminology used to write grammars. This paradigm shift can be traced in grammars such as the Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer (“Concise Turkish Grammar”, 1928) published by the Turkish Language Association, the Ana Hatları ile Türk Grameri Kılavuz Kitap (“Manual on the Grammar of the Turkish Language in Outlines”, 1940) of Tahsin Banguoğlu, and the Türk Dilbilgisi (“Turkish Grammar”, 1945) of Ahmet Cevat Emre.
3. Turkish as an Independent Vernacular
39The birth of the Republic of Turkey in the early 1920s brought significant changes from a political, institutional, and cultural point of view. Among these was the language reform process begun in 1928, which aimed at purging the Turkish language of Arabic and Persian influences.41 The most significant and symbolic moment of the reform was the adoption of the Latin alphabet to write Turkish, in contrast to the Arabic script used in the Ottoman era. In addition, the reform had a considerable impact on studies focusing on the Turkish language: scholars working on 20th century-Turkish labelled it Modern Turkish or Turkish, thus marking it as distinct from Ottoman Turkish. Grammars written in this period played an important role both in the attempt to purify Modern Turkish of Arabic and Persian influences, and in the standardization of Turkish as an independent vernacular.
40In 1928, the newly established Türk Dil Kurumu (Turkish Language Association) published a 69-page study entitled Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer (“Concise Turkish Grammar”) as an appendix to the Gramer Hakkında Rapor (“Report on Grammar”). This report is important for two main reasons. On the one hand, it should be considered within the broader political project of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s language reforms, which aimed at the definition of Modern Turkish as the national language of the new-born Republic of Turkey.42 On the other hand, it provided a guide laying out the principles that authors should adopt when writing grammars.
41The paradigm shift from the traditional approach to the new one in grammar writing is evident in the choice of words in the title: here the book used the word gramer (from the French word grammaire) to address the concept of grammar, instead of the Arabic words kavaid, sarf, or nahiv, which recur in the titles of works on similar subjects published in the previous decades.
42This concise study opened up new approaches for the study of the grammar of Modern Turkish. All the grammars published after the Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer avoided references to Arabic and Persian in their analysis of the Turkish language. Moreover, these subsequent works increasingly privileged the use of European linguistic terminology to label parts of speech, and chose examples from conversational Turkish, or words with Turkish etymology, to better explain grammatical concepts.
43The Turkish Language Council organized the contents of Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer according to two main sections, phonetics (fonetik), and morphology (şekliyat). The first section analyzed sounds and letters (harf), the concept of vowel harmony (ahenk), and syllables (hece). The second section focused on the concepts of nouns (isim), grammatical number (divided into cem for plural and müfred for singular), pronouns (zamir), adjectives (sıfat), verbs (fiil), and verb conjugations with different tenses.
44In terms of its content, the Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer recalls the grammars published from the last decade of the 19th century onwards. In some respects, in fact, this grammar could be classified among those belonging to the transitional period between a traditional, Arabic linguistics-influenced method and a contemporary approach to the description of the grammar of Modern Turkish. Even though it contains some Arabic linguistic terminology, the Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer labels the study of the sounds of the language with word from a European language (in the text fonetik, from the French word phonétique). Moreover, the section focusing on the phonetics of the Modern Turkish language distinguishes consonants according to their manner of articulation (spirantes, fricatives, occlusives),43 and voicing (sonores, sourdes).44 This latter approach represents an attempt to give a more detailed description of Turkish phonetics. At the same time, the use of French terminology in the classification of sounds shows that Turkish linguists in those years were acquainted both with European debates about linguistics and with the terminology used in grammatical works on the French language.
45Grammars published after the publication of the Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer were written according to these principles. A substantial difference between these texts and those analyzed up to this point is the absence of exercises. This aspect can be justified by the fact that during the first few years after the reform of the Turkish alphabet and language, grammar lessons had been suspended by the Ministry of Education.45 Therefore, grammatical texts written in this period focused instead on defining standard rules and principles to write and speak in Turkish, as well as defining Turkish as the official vernacular of the nation.
46This group of grammars includes the Ana Hatları ile Türk Grameri Kılavuz Kitap (“Manual on the Grammar of the Turkish Language in Outlines”), written by the Turkologist Tahsin Banguoğlu in 1941, and the Türk Dilbilgisi (“Turkish Grammar”), published in 1945 by Ahmet Cevat Emre.
47The Ana Hatları ile Türk Grameri Kılavuz Kitap of Tahsin Banguoğlu represents one of the best examples of the paradigm shift between Arabic and European linguistic terminologies for the description of the vocabulary and grammatical rules of the Modern Turkish language. In the introduction to this work, the author offers readers general information on languages and grammar. This work introduces interesting examples of the Turkification of the linguistic terminology.46 It is divided into three sections entitled, respectively, phonology (ses bilgisi), morphology (yapı bilgisi), and syntax (söz dizimi). The phonology section focuses on the phonetics of the Turkish language, and the merging and assimilation of sounds. In the morphology section, the author discusses word inflection and the classification of words. The syntax section focuses on the concept of sentence and the analysis of different kinds of sentences.
48Published in 1945, Ahmet Cevat Emre’s Türk Dilbilgisi displays similar characteristics and also introduces further innovative elements concerning the use of Modern Turkish terminology to address grammatical structures. The word dilbilgisi is a compound noun formed by dil (language) and bilgi (information), therefore it can be translated “knowledge about language”, which is nowadays the common Modern Turkish term for the word grammar. Other sections of this book contain other examples of this innovative phenomenon. As an example, a detailed description of the sounds of the language is given in the section entitled ses bilgisi (phonetics),47 küçültmelikler is used for diminutives (while in grammars written between the last few years of the 19th century and the 1910s linguists privileged the use of ism-i tasgir, a term of Arabic derivation, to label this class of words); sözdizimi for syntax (while grammars belonging to the traditional and transitional periods used the Arabic term nahiv for this concept). The terminology chosen by the authors comes from European languages in some cases, such as terim from the English word term, morfem from the French word morphème.
49In the examples he gives, Ahmet Cevat Emre privileges either words with a Turkish etymology48 or words coming from languages spoken in Europe, as in the section on nouns:
Philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, and fine arts have thousands of foreign words. Most of these are names of plants, animals, clothing, all kinds of goods, sports, and games. Whichever branch of technology, art, or science you take, you will discover its richness in terms of foreign words. For instance, in theatre: piyes (play), komedi (comedy), dram (drama), trajedi (tragedy), mizansen (mise en scène).49
50Due to their use of Turkish or European terminology to label grammatical concepts, their choice of examples from everyday linguistic interactions, and their attempt to analyze Modern Turkish independently of comparisons with other languages (e.g., Arabic, Persian, or languages spoken in Europe), the works by Tahsin Banguoğlu and Ahmet Cevat Emre represent two innovative examples of Modern Turkish grammars. They would come to be the model for later grammatical works composed from the first half on the 20th century onwards.
Conclusion
51Between the end of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century, the approaches taken by Ottoman scholars to the composition of grammars of Ottoman Turkish underwent significative changes in their terminology and in the methods used to address grammatical concepts. As this paper has aimed to show, grammars published in this period can be divided into three distinct phases. In the last years of the 19th century, authors such as Tahir Kenan and Şeyh Vasfi wrote grammars of Ottoman Turkish according to the traditional approach of Arabic linguistics. The terminology they used to describe grammatical concepts is clearly of Arabic derivation. Furthermore, rather than analyzing Ottoman-Turkish as an independent language, the grammars written in this period presented Ottoman Turkish through a comparative approach, taking into account the characteristics held in common by Arabic, Ottoman Turkish and Persian. Later, we find works such as the Nev-Usul Sarf-ı Türki, of Şemseddin Sami and the Mükemmel Osmanlı Sarf of Manastırlı Mehmet Rıfat. Notwithstanding their use of a conceptual and terminological framework of Arabic derivation, these works display innovative aspects such as analysis of the phonetical features of the language, the use of examples from colloquial Ottoman Turkish, and a partially succesful attempt to analyze linguistic structures avoiding references to Arabic and Persian.
52Later, the foundation of the Turkish Republic in the early 1920s brought several political, institutional, and cultural reforms. Among these were language reforms in 1928 and 1932, which aimed to purge the language of Arabic and Persian influences. This cultural revolution also had an impact on grammatical studies, resulting in the publication of the first grammars to successfully analyze the language as a distinct vernacular, with features different from those of Arabic and Persian. The Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer (“Concise Turkish Grammar”), an appendix to the Gramer Hakkında Rapor (“Report on Grammar”), lay the foundation for this paradigm shift. This is evident from the choice of words for the title, with the use of the the word “gramer” (of French derivation) for the concept of grammar, rather than the Arabic words kavaid, sarf, or nahiv, which are found recurrently in the titles of the works published in previous decades.
53This concise appendix opened new avenues for the description of the grammar of Modern Turkish. All the grammar books published after the Muhtasar Türkçe Gramer avoid references to Arabic and Persian in their analysis of Modern Turkish. Furthermore, these works increasingly privileged the use of either European linguistic terminology or Turkish neologisms to label parts of speech. In addition, they chose examples from conversational Modern Turkish, or words with a Turkish etymology, to better explain grammatical concepts.
54These three phases represent three important steps towards the systematization of sciences of language and the establishment of Turkology as an independent science with distinctive features and concepts independent of those belonging to the Arabic language sciences. Furthermore, analyzing grammars of both Ottoman Turkish and Modern Turkish is also interesting for the light it sheds on the genesis and evolution of the ideas which led to the standardization of Turkish as an independent vernacular during the period from the second half of the 19th to the first decades of the 20th. Moreover, this study aims to open up new approaches for further study of the impact that European linguistics had in the Ottoman and Turkish cultural contexts – caught between East and West – and to lay the grounds for a history of ideas about language that will encompass their transnational and transcultural dimensions.
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Notes de bas de page
1 The grammars analyzed in this chapter span a historical period ranging from the second half of the 19th to the first half of the 20th century. This crucial period in Turkish history saw the end of the Ottoman Empire and, in 1923, the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. The years following the foundation of the Republic saw the promulgation of a series of political, institutional and educational reforms, including the Turkish language reform process which began in 1928. In Turkology, this reform is taken as marking the transition from Ottoman Turkish to Modern Turkish. It is of crucial importance for studies of the Turkish language. As the research presented here focuses on the period of transition between Ottoman Turkish and Modern Turkish, in this paper we will encounter both terms.
2 The only known professional Arabic grammarian to have written a grammar of Turkic was Abū Ḥayyān al-ʾAndalusī (654AH/1256AD - 745AH/1345AD). For a more detailed account, see Auroux, Koerner, Niederehe and Versteegh (2000: 325); Versteegh (2020); Ermers (1999).
3 Bellino 2014: 164.
4 Besim Atalay, author of the first edition of the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm in contemporary Turkish, states that we do not have any further information on the life and works of Kadri of Pergamon (Atalay 1946: VII).
5 In an article entitled Müyessiretü’l-Ulûm’un Kayıp Nüshaları (“Lost Copies of the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm”), Kaçar reconstructs the history of the text. Kaçar states that the writer Mehmet Tahir of Bursa first found a copy of the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm in 1911. In 1912, the educator Kazım Nami wrote a piece about the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm for the journal Türk Yurdu (“Turkish Homeland”), later Mehmet Tahir himself shared more information about this grammar in a journal entitled Bilgi (“Knowledge”). Mehmet Tahir and another educator called Rıfat Bilge printed their own copies of the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm. Later Rıfat Bilge sold his copy to the l Âsâr-ı Atîka museum in Istanbul. In an article published on the 28th of October 1916 in the journal Muallim (“Teacher”), the Ottoman Ministry of Education announced the publication of the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm. After this, there is no further news of either the publication or the manuscript, which seems to have disappeared, as the writer Fuat Köprülü later reported in an article entitled Dil tarihi bakımından büyük ehemmiyeti olan bu küçük kitabı o zaman ben de istinsah etmiştim (“At that time, I also copied this small book, which is of great importance in terms of language history”) published in the newspaper Cumhuriyet on 27 March 1933. In 1946, Besim Atalay published the first edition of the book in contemporary Turkish, copying the text from photographs of the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm given to him by the Undersecretary of the Minister of Education Ihsan Sungu (Atalay 1946: VIII; Kaçar 2018: 263). We do not know whether the photographs used by Besim Atalay were taken from copies or from the original manuscript of the Müyessiretü’l-ulûm, which is perhaps lost (Kaçar 2018: 264). In this article, I have used the edition of the book published by Besim Atalay in 1946.
6 Ottoman-Turkish uses the word isim (noun) for complements. Thus we have ism-i mekan (complement of place), ism-i zaman (complement of time).
7 The author hypothesizes that the reason why grammarians did not write grammars of Ottoman Turkish in this period can be ascribed to the fact that - from the 13th century to the first half of the 19th century - educational centers in the Ottoman Empire were largely represented by madrasas, in which the language of instruction was Arabic (Korkmaz 2002: 42).
8 In this chapter, I will use the term Modern Turkish.
9 Göğüş, 1971: 127.
10 Grammars written between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century often define the Turkish language as “Ottoman Turkish” to indicate that they are concerned with the Turkish language as written and spoken in the Ottoman Empire.
11 The equivalent of a postposition in Arabic would be harf jarr (“particle [governing] the genitive”), the word adat in fact means “particle”. In the grammatical treatises analyzed for this paper, we can see that Turkish grammarians used edat for both particles and postpositions. Turkish language postpositions are particles combined to a complement through an agglutinative process. In Turkish, particles are used separately and after the complement (e.g., şiseyi ağzına kadar doldurdum, “I have filled the bottle up to the brim”). Since in Turkish grammar both particles and postpositions do not have meaning without the word preceding them, we can assume that they decided to include both parts of speech under the term edat.
12 Original quote from the text as follows: Arabide sihab manasina olan (zu) ve (zi) ve cemleri olan (zui) kelimeleri bazen muzaf olarak lisan-I osmanide istimal olunur: ‘zülvecheyn’ gibi ‘iki yüzlü’ demektir, ‘vazı’ul yed’ el sahibi demektir. (Cevdet and Fuat 1850: 121).
13 This represents an interesting aspect, since the notion of syllable is foreign to the Arabic tradition. According to the Nisanyan etymological dictionary of Turkish, the word hece comes from the Arabic hicāˀ هِجاء, meaning “read a poem rhythmically” (link: https://www.nisanyansozluk.com/kelime/hece). The origins of the syllabic meter used in Turkish literature are not known. However, since the Middle Ages, syllabic meter has been used in all folk literature poems. Given this meaning and its function in folk poetry, the word hece has come to be used by grammarians with the meaning of syllable. Since the structure “letter-syllable-word” is typical of the Greco-Latin system, we can suppose that Tahir Kenan here tried to introduce the syllabic structure of the Greco-Latin linguistic tradition into Arabic terminology.
14 In Persian and in Ottoman Turkish, the ezafe construction is represented by the unstressed short vowel -e and -i in words ending with a consonant (-ye or -yi after words ending with a vowel); it sometimes corresponds to the English preposition “of”.
15 An interesting aspect is that the Arabic word tanqît refers to the diacritical points used to distinguish letters having the same ductus. Notwithstanding this, its use for “punctuation marks” in Turkish is modern and can be interpreted as a result of both the introduction of punctuation marks in the grammar of the Turkish language (which, for the punctuation system, followed the rules of French grammar) in the 19th century and the diffusion of printing. For a more detailed account, see Bouquet (2018).
16 The digraph lam-alif, treated as a single letter in Arabic script.
17 The letters pe, che, zhe, kaf of the Persian alphabet.
18 Original quote from the text as follows: Lisan-ı Arabda müsta’mel olan huruf- لا- ile beraber yırmı dokuzdur. Bunlar Acem ve Türk dillerine mahsus olan ‘پ،چ،ژ، ک ‘ve yalnız Türkçe’ye aid bulunan harflerinin maadasıdır (Gürsoy and Karahan 2004: 11-12).
19 Even though he refers to Arabic grammar, Tahir Kenan chooses âh (an exclamative particle which came from Persian), a (an exclamative particle with a Turkish etymology), and oh (exclamative particle, Turkish) as examples of simple prepositions and particles. To illustrate compound prepositions and particles, he chooses three adverbs niçin (why), nasıl (how), and nitekim (thus) with a Turkish etymology. The decision to include Persian and Turkish examples in a definition related to Arabic grammar can be interpreted as an indication that the author considered these three languages as interrelated. It is also interesting to note that Tahir Kenan did not dedicate a separate section to the analysis of adverbs but rather analyzes them as edevat (plural of edat, meaning “prepositions and particles”). This choice may have been motivated by the explanation that Tahir Kenan himself provides in the first lines of the section: all the words which acquire meaning when accompanied by nouns and verbs are to be defined as prepositions and particles (Te’lȋf-i cümel (ve) ibârât için esmâ ve ef’âle mukaarenet ve tab’ında mahsûs ve mahsûr olan ma ‘nâya muvâzabetle, ifâdâtımızı bir silsile-I selȋseye rabt ve isbâl ve terkȋbdeki karȋneyi zabt ve ikmâl eden, ve ba’zan hissiyât-ı rakȋke-I muhtelifeye tercümân olmak üzere münferiden dahi ȋrâd olunabilen elfâza “edevât” nâmı verilir) (Gürsoy and Karahan 2004: 65).
20 Gürsoy and Karahan (2004: 98).
21 On the cover page of Ahmet Cevdet and Mehmet Fuat’s Kavaid-i Osmaniyye, we read that it “has been accepted by the General Ministry of Education to be taught in the fourth year of secondary schools” (Metkeb-i İdâdiyye’nin dördüncü senesinde tedris olunmak üzere Maârif-i Umûmiye Nezâreti celilesince kabul olunmuştur) (Cevdet and Fuat 1850: I). In the introductory section of Tahir Kenan’s Kavaid-i Lisan-ı Türki, we read: ‘This book has been written for secondary school students who have already attended primary and junior high school (Bu kitap- ibtidâȋ ve rüşdȋ kısımlarını görmüş bulunan- tahsȋl-i i´dâdȋ erbâbına göre yazılmıştır) (Gürsoy and Karahan 2004: 5).
22 “heavy-heavily, beauty-beautifully” (Şeyh Vasfi 1901: 36).
23 “ugly-to become ugly”, “lame-to limp” (Şeyh Vasfi 1901: 150-151).
24 For instance, to explain the concept and use of interjections, Şemseddin Sami chooses colloquial expressions such as sus! (‘shut up!’), yahu! (‘man!’), yazık! (‘what a pity!’) (Hamit 2009: 112).
25 He adapts Arabic terminology to what can be defined as cases in Turkish language. Therefore, mücerred is used for the nominative, mûzafun ileyhi for the genitive, mûzafün ileyhi for the dative, mefûlün bih for the accusative.
26 Ef’âl-i mürekkebe Arabi ve Farisi kelimelere mahsus olmayıp asıl Türkçe veya diğer bir ecnebi lisanından me’hûz bazı isimlerden dahi ef’ âl-i mürekkebe teşkil olunur. Mesela yardım etmek, yardım olunmak, protesto etmek (“Compound verbs are not common only in Arabic and Persian. It is possible to form compound verbs from Turkish and words from other foreign languages. Some examples are ‘to help’, ‘to be helped’, ‘to protest’”) (Hamit 2009: 101).
27 Protesto comes from the Italian word protestare (‘to protest’).
28 Hareke ustun denilen ‘fetha’ ve esre denilen ‘kesr’ ve ‘ötre’ denilen ‘zamme’dir. bunlardan fetha ile kesre hafife ve sokule manalariyla ikiser turludur (“The vowel points (hareke üstün) are called ‘fetha’, ‘kasra’ and ‘damma’. Thanks to fatha and kasra we can distinguish between ‘high’ and ‘low’ [consonants].”) (Tamkoç 2013: 28).
29 Türkçe müfredleriyle Lisan-i Osmanide kullanılar Arabi ve Farisi müfred kelimelerini cem yapmak için ahirlerine bir (-lAr) ilave olunur. (yemiş, ev, mektep, bina, hane, bağ) müfredinin ahirlerine mezkur (-lAr) ilave olunup (yemişler, mektepler, binalar, haneler, bağlar) cemleri hasıl olduğu gibi (“In order to form the plural of Arabic and Persian words, we add (-lAr) to their final consonants (ahirlerine). By adding the aforementioned (-lAr) to the singular form of the words, we obtain their plural.”) (Tamkoç 2013: 30).
30 Tamkoç (2013: 34).
31 This aspect is relevant because it shows that Hüseyin Cahit – together with linguists such as Şemseddin Sami and Necip Asım – was acquainted with 19th century European debates concerning linguistics and language families.
32 Türkçe, elsine-i iltisakiyyeden ‘Ural ve Altay’ aile-i elsinesine mensuptur. Ural-Altay lisanları başlıca beş şu’beye ayrılmıştır: Samoyet şu’besi, Finuva şu’ besi, Turk şu’besi, Mogol şu’besi, Tunguz şu’besi (Hüseyin Cahit 1908: 16).
33 The theory of the existence of a language family including the Turkic, Uralic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages is nowadays considered controversial and is disputed by most linguists. For a more detailed account, see Janhunen 2023.
34 Hüseyin Cahit (1908: 8-10).
35 Hüseyin Cahit (1975: 160-162).
36 In Ottoman Turkish there are two ways to express the relation of possession. The first one is by applying the ezafe rule explained above. The second requires the use of possessive suffixes (forty-six both in Ottoman Turkish and in contemporary Turkish). A further distinction between the two rules is that the ezafe is a linguistic construction from the Persian language, while suffixes are characteristic of Turkic languages. Both ways of expressing the relation of possession were widely used in 19th century Ottoman Turkish written texts such as newspapers, magazines, novels, and poems. However, up till now, the grammatical works analyzed in this chapter focused only on the ezafe rule, omitting the construction based on the use of possessive suffixes. Therefore, Ahmet Cevat Emre’s decison to include both rules represents an element of novelty in the analysis of the structures of Ottoman Turkish language. For a more detailed analysis of the use of ezafe and possessive suffixes in 19th century Ottoman Turkish, see Cristaldi 2021.
37 On why in Ottoman Turkish the term isim is used to define both nouns and cases, see footnote 5.
38 For instance, page 21 has an image of a field with chickens and other animals to explain the concept of “farm”. The image is accompanied by a caption showing the Turkish word for “farm” (çiftlik). Similarly, page 31 has a picture of several animals with captions for each image.
39 K derken ağızdan evvel bir ‘k’ çıkıyor, sonra dudaklarımız iyice ayrılıyor, alt çeneğimiz aşağıya doğru iniyor; hece ‘ke’ olarak işidiliyor. ‘Di’yi söylerken de, evvel dişlerimiz arasında hafif bir ‘d’ çıkıyor, sonra daha şiddetli bir hareketle hece tamamıyla (di) olarak istima’ olunur (Sağol, Şahin, Yıldız 2004: 5).
40 Note the orthography of the words coming from Arabic and Persian (Arabi ve Farisi kelimelerin imlasına dikkat ediniz in Sağol, Şahin, Yıldız 2004: 77).
41 For an exhaustive analysis of the Turkish language reform, see Lewis 1999.
42 For a more detailed account, see Szurek 2013.
43 Türk Dil Encümeni (“Turkish Language Council”, 1928: 15).
44 Op. Cit., 16.
45 In the introductory section of the Türkçenin Grameri, Tahsin Banguoğlu states that grammatical lessons had been suspended until 1940, when Hasan Ali Yücel asked him to write a grammar of the Turkish language (Banguoğlu 1940: 5). This decision can be explained by the fact that grammarians in this period were busy reorganizing the structure of grammars, which were to be adapted so as to teach students the language according to a different approach, focusing on Turkish as a vernacular with structures different from those of Persian and Arabic.
46 The replacement of loanwords in Modern Turkish was part of the language reform promoted by the Turkish Language Association. Ottoman Turkish had many loanwords from Arabic and Persian, as well as from languages spoken in Europe (such as Italian, English, French). In this framework, the Turkish Language Association encouraged the replacement of these loanwords with their Turkish counterparts, a process that often resulted in the creation of neologisms. Coinages such as yapı bilgisi (morphology) in replacement of the Arabic sarf, and söz dizimi (syntax) in replacement of the Arabic nahiv, are two representative examples of this linguistic policy.
47 Ahmet Cevat Emre (1945: 81-82).
48 Ahmet Cevat Emre (1945: 44).
49 Binlerle olan bu yabancı kelimelerden felsefe, matematik, kimya, fizik, botanik, zooloji, güzel sanatlar… terimleri olanlar pek çoktur, birçoğu da bitki, hayvan, giyim kuşam, her türlü eşya, spor, oyun isimleridir. Tekniğin, sanatin, bilimin kollarından hangisini alsanız yabancı terimler içine batmış olduğunu görürsünüz; meselâ, tiyatroda: Piyes, komedi, dram, trajedi (tragedya), mizansen. (Ahmet Cevat Emre 1945: 33).
Auteur
Üsküdar University
Maria Pia Ester Cristaldi has a PhD in Communication obtained at the University of Marmara in Istanbul. She has worked on a thesis demonstrating the continuity of the Turkish language between the late 19th century and the first years of the Turkish Republic (early 20th century) through a survey of Ottoman newspapers. Her research interests cover communication studies, philosophy of language, sociolinguistics, and the analysis of non-Latin writing systems. She is interested in Natural Language Processing. She has worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bologna. In the same Department, she has worked as a researcher in the European Research Council-funded project NONWESTLIT, a comparative study of cultural reforms, linguistic renewal, and literary renaissance movements in three imperial traditions, caught between the East-West divide in the 19th century: Turkey, Russia and Japan. In the project, she was responsible for the linguistic and quantitative data analysis. She has recently published an article entitled “Embracing new citizens: the education of D/deaf pupils in the Late Ottoman Empire”, which covers subjects such as language teaching, acquisition of knowledge, and social inclusion of D/deaf Ottoman citizens at the end of the 19th century.

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