Syntactic and Semantic View of Dative Case Suffix in Chaghatai Turkish

Abstract

Our way of perceiving the world becomes concrete with language after passing through the filter of mind. Expression of feelings and thoughts occurs when the units making up the language come together in accordance with the syntax rules and interact with each other. However, the impossibility of a limited number of language units to express an unlimited number of emotions and thoughts reveals the necessity of assigning more than one function to language units. One of the multifunctional units of the language is suffixes. Suffixes are language units that enable the formation of syntactic structures in the form of word groups and sentences with the syntactic and semantic relations they establish between words.

As one of the functional language units of Turkish, case suffixes establish a connection between nouns and other words, and enable nouns which already have a semantic field on their own to be a part of the syntax at the same time. By providing meanings such as time, reason, purpose, intention in addition to its main function of indicating direction or goal of action, dative case suffix enables the words end of which it is added to take on syntactic functions in the sentence, that is, to become a complementary element depending on the executive element of the sentence. Accordingly, in this study aiming to determine the syntactic and semantic functions of the dative case suffix in Chaghatai Turkish, the semantic functions of the suffix were attempted to be analyzed in line with the syntactic structures it established.

As a result of the evaluation, it has been observed that the main task of the dative case suffix, used in the works written in Chaghatai Turkish is to connect nouns to words such as nouns, verbs and prepositions, and to ensure that they take on syntactic tasks, that is, to be a mandatory or optional element of a sentence or word group. In addition to its basic function of indicating direction or goal of action in the works of this period, dative case suffix also established various meaning relations between words such as purpose, reason, situation, time, reasoning, peculiarity, belonging, relativity, value, cost, reward, superiority, comparison, instrument, limitation in time and space, presence, and leaving. The suffix sometimes fulfills these functions through prepositions such as köre, ḳarşu, tėgrü, dėgin, dėginçe, tėgi.