Lars Johanson

Éva Á. Csató

The Turkic Languages examines the modern languages within this wide-ranging language family and gives an historical overview of their development.The first part covers generalities, providing an introduction to the grammatical traditions, subgrouping and writing systems of this language family. The latter part of the book focuses on descriptions of the individual languages themselves. Each language description gives an overview of the language followed by detail on phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis and dialects. The language chapters are similarly structured to enable the reader to access and compare information easily. Each chapter represents a self-contained article written by a recognised expert in the field. Suggestions are made for the most useful sources of further reading and the work is comprehensively indexed.

The Turkic Languages

The Turkic languages are spoken today in a vast geographical area stretching from southern Iran to the Arctic Ocean and from the Balkans to the great wall of China. There are currently 20 literary languages in the group, the most important among them being Turkish with over 70 million speakers; other major languages covered include Azeri, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Noghay, Tatar, Turkmen, Uyghur, Uzbek, Yakut, Yellow Uyghur and languages of Iran and South Siberia. The Turkic Languages is a reference book which brings together detailed discussions of the historical development and specialized linguistic structures and features of the languages in the Turkic family. Seen from a linguistic typology point of view, Turkic languages are particularly interesting because of their astonishing morphosyntactic regularity, their vast geographical distribution, and their great stability over time. This volume builds upon a work which has already become a defining classic of Turkic language study. The present, thoroughly revised edition updates and augments those authoritative accounts and reflects recent and ongoing developments in the languages themselves, as well as our further enhanced understanding of the relations and patterns of influence between them. The result is the fruit of decades-long experience in the teaching of the Turkic languages, their philology and literature, and also of a wealth of new insights into the linguistic phenomena and cultural interactions defining their development and use, both historically and in the present day. Each chapter combines modern linguistic analysis with traditional historical linguistics; a uniform structure allows for easy typological comparison between the individual languages. Written by an international team of experts, The Turkic Languages will be invaluable to students and researchers within linguistics, Turcology, and Near Eastern and Oriental Studies.

Éva Á. Csató

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