Marek Stachowski

A discussion of the problem of “Altaic” influence on Proto-Slavic is the main focus of this paper. In its first part, chronological and terminological questions are presented; the second part is devoted to etymologies (*baranъ ‘ram’, *koza ‘goat’, *klobukъ ‘fur cap, hat’, *kъlbasa ‘sausage’, sablja ‘sabre’).

A comparison of two books (GG; JG), newly published by the Harrassowitz Verlag and concerning history of Oriental (mostly Kalmuck and Chinese) linguistic studies in 19th century Europe is presented in this article, along with an analysis of some information on Bernhard Jülg’s studies and scholarly plans during his stay in Cracow.

Thirty-one etymological studies published in a new volume by David L. Gold are discussed in this article. A general characteristics of David L. Gold’s etymological work and methodology is given at the end of the study.

Even if the derivation of the meaning ‘scamp, scallywag, imp’ < ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ is generally imaginable (albeit not self-evident) it is assumed here that this change is actually based on addition of a foreign meaning to a German one, rather than on semantic evolution.

Numerous Tukic words with only partially coinciding meanings (cf. the title and the first paragraph of the article) are traced back to very similar or even identical Proto-Turkic stems in ÈSTJa, and for most of the stems two or even three phonetic variants are suggested. In this article an attempt at finding possibly clear reconstructs is made.
 

Die Tatsache, daß das ttü. Wort öveç ‘Widder im Alter von 2-3 Jahren’1 dem slav. *ovьca ‘weibliches Schaf bzw. *ovьecь männliches Schaf, Widder’ mehr oder weniger ähnlich ist, fällt leicht auf, besonders wenn man das ttü. Wort mit den neuzeitlichen Reflexen des urslav. Maskulinums zusammenstellt, vgl. sloven. (18. Jh.) ovec, russ.dial. (Archangelsk) ovéc, sowie mit dem Diphthong im Anlaut: pomoran. u{ovc und obersorb. u{ou{c (Furlan 2000: 164). A. Loma (2006: 36, Anm. 14) äußert sich hierzu vorsichtig: “[…] one might keep in consideration […] the similarity of the Turkish form öveč cited above with Common Slavic *ovьEcь ‘ram, wether; sheep in general’ (an old masculinum to *ovьca f. […])”.

Two important etymological dictionaries (one of English and one of the Germanic languages) and a bibliography of English etymology appeared in recent years. The aim of this article is to critically present and compare, as well as to formulate a conclusion concerning the best possible future of an etymological dictionary.

Only Polish words from Marcin Paszkowski’s “Dictionary” have been published up to now while their Turkish equivalents have never been edited although two scholars (Ananiasz Zajączkowski 1938 and Stanisław Stachowski 1989) intended to do so. In this article the reasons for this situation are discussed and explained, as well as a solution is suggested as to how the source can be useful

Very few people know that a possibility of reconstructing protolanguages or protoforms was probably first suggested as early as in the 16th century by Miechowita while discussing the origin of the name of Hungarians and that of Yugra. Miechowita’s “Treatise on the two Sarmatias” was once an extremely important source of knowledge of the geography and history of East Europe. Although much was written on its significance in correcting more or less unlikely information concerning these subjects his linguistic material was actually ignored. The aim of this study is to examine what was known about East European languages in the early sixteenth century.

Although it is easy to fathom why Eurolinguistic research tends to concern what is called Standard Average European (see Haspelmath 2001) rather than peripheral non-Indo-European languages of Europe this author’s opinion is that a closer look precisely at the latter makes the linguistic picture of Europe more interesting, more true and more complex. At the same time a few methodological questions arise. Some of them are presented and (partially) discussed in this study.

Witold Mańczak’s oeuvre comprises various topics of historical linguistics. This article attempts to explain why some aspects of his theory are hardly accepted, yet his work still deserves interest and serious discussion.

In this study an analysis of the phonetic adaptation of Arabic and Persian loan-words in Ottoman Turkish is continued (for the vocalic part of the analysis see Stachowski M. [forthcoming]). Five phenomena are presented in the context of the general Turkic phonetic evolution. These are: [a] palatalization of (-)kE- > (-)čE-; [b] varying anlaut nasality: m- > b- and b- > m-; [c] despirantization of f > p; [d] epenthetic n; [e] shortening of geminates.

This study is devoted to the problem of the interrelationship between Turkic syŋar ‘direction’ and jak ~ jan ‘side’ on the one hand, and the Khakas, Shor and Oyrot directive suffixes -jar(y) ~ -sar(y) ~ -sāra, and so on, on the other. The paper seeks to answer four questions: (1) Are jak ‘side’ and jan id. two derivatives ultimately of the same root *√ja?; (2) How do jak ‘side’ and sak id. compare?; (3) If it is true that jar, sar < *jagar, *sagar, how, then, should the final vowel in jary, sara, etc. be explained?; (4) How do Old Tkc. syŋar ‘direction’ (also used as a directive postposition) and sar ~ jar compare?

This paper has been inspired by Roberto Dapit’s study of 2021. My aim is to show the sense of using what can be called “perceptual etymology” (analogically to “perceptual dialectology”) along with and in contrast to the “scholarly etymology”.

Perceptual etymology is a new term which is introduced here to refer to an anthropological rather than a purely linguistic interpretation of the origins of words. This author tries to show in what way different aspects of our understanding of etymology can be combined to create a coherent and possibly full image of a word.

 (Marginal notes on Turkic ker(g)äk ‘necessary’). This author presents a few remarks concerning the etymology, usage and semantic evolution of Turkic ker(g)äk ‘necessary’ that seems to be sometimes, albeit not always, better understood as a noun. The starting point of these remarks is a new publication by Claus Schönig.

Those who are interested in the investigation of the oldest Turkic loan-words into Hungarian have known for a couple of years about the research on this topic conducted in Szeged. It has resulted in a two-volume edition which will certainly inspire many scholars from now onwards. In the present article a handful of remarks and suggestions is presented that were noted down while reading the “new Gombocz”.

This author’s aim is to show that the general notion “dogmatic dictionary” actually comprises various scholarly etymological dictionaries that should be distinguished from each other due to their different informational potential.

Franciscus Meninski generally used the letter ‹y› as a symbol for today’s Turkish ı. However, this letter also appears in front vocalic words which contradicts the palato-velar aspect of Turkish vowel harmony. Mertol Tulum has recently attempted to show that the phonetic value of ‹y› in front vocalic words was a central, high vowel placed between the Turkish i and ı (one that would probably be rendered [ɨ] in the IPA; however, since this letter is barely visible in print, especially in the footnotes, I have decided to replace it with its Fenno-Ugristic equivalent [i] here). The present author, thus, examines Tulum’s line of reasoning and dicusses the possibility of reinterpreting the functions fulfilled by ‹y› and ‹ü› in Meninski’s work.

Tobacco was certainly one of the most popular drug products in Europe until the end of the 20th century. Nevertheless, our knowledge of the history of its designations is fairly often limited to general statements like, for instance, “from Spanish” (for English tobacco) or “from Turkish” (for Polish tytoń) and so on. This author aims at establishing some lexicological areas displaying various influences on the Slavic languages in that respect, as well as providing critical assessment of earlier claims and presenting his own observations concerning the Slavic designations of ‘tobacco’.

Morphological categories of Siberian Turkic numerals are particularly complex and therefore deemed to be especially advantageous to areal investigations. The aim of this paper is to see whether (at least some of) the suffixes of collective numerals can readily be used as isogloss connecting Yakut and Dolgan with Tuvinian and Tofalar or, maybe, also some other Turkic languages.

It would not be an easy task to find a Slavic linguist who had never heard about the Ottoman Turkish influence upon Balkan Slavic. Nevertheless, this author argues that caution should be exercised with the term which is inconsistent with the Turkological understanding of “Ottoman”. In the final part of the paper some terminological suggestions are made.

Slovak has never had especially intense contacts with Turkish or any other Turkic lan­guage. This author tries to show that loanwords called “Turkisms in Slovak” neverthe­less call for more attention and research than one might initially think as well as that, indeed, there possibly exist a few words borrowed directly from Turkish into Slovak. These words may, at least sometimes, reflect an old colloquial pronunciation variant in the speech of Turkish soldiers and are, thus, a Slovak contribution to investigation into Turkish linguistic history.

The fact that Turkish palatalized consonants ḱ and ǵ are rendered ć and ‹đ› = ʒ́, respectively, in Croatian and Serbian was not discussed in detail thus far. This author is trying to settle the source(s), the mechanism, the time and the place of the change.

The Polish origin of the Yakut word for ‘snuff’ was suggested some years ago but a closer look at this word nest reveals new and rather unclear aspects. The other word to be discussed here is that for ‘thousand’; its Russian origin is doubted by this author because of phonetic inaccuracies which can be well removed once a Polish etymon of the Yakut word is accepted.

Out of the two forms of genitive plural of the Ukrainian noun stat't'a ‘article’, namely stattej and statej, the former has been assumed to be purely Ukrainian, whereas the latter a Russified one. The paper attempts to demonstrate that the relationship is not necessarily as simple, moreover, that such an interpretation does not altogether answer the question of why only the form of genitive plural, and why of this very word, would have become the object of a stronger Russification.

The discussion of the origin of the Turkish city name İstanbul that began well over a century ago has divided scholars into two groups: those who accept the Greek phrase εἰς τὴν πόλιν (or similar) as the source of the name, vs. those who try to trace it back directly to Greek Κωνσταντινούπολις ~ Κωνσταντινόπολις. The writings of both parties are encumbered by poor Turcology, inaccurate attention to early records and an overly narrow view of medieval Anatolian Greek phonetics. More scrupulous examination of all three types of evidence has revealed a more interesting picture than has previously been suggested.

Walther Heissig (1913–2005) was certainly one of the most influential researchers on Mongolian, well thought of by his fellows and esteemed by his students. This edition of archive materials concerning Heissig’s life and work (cited below as WH) is a good opportunity for this author to discuss some aspects of a future, possibly all-embracing biography of Heissig.

‘Whore barley’ is an English translation of a Croatian syntagm adduced in Evliya Çelebi’s itinerary. This author, intrigued by the apparently senseless expression, tries to explain its meaning.