Abstract
Formulaic Expressions Created Through Organ Names in Old Uyghur
Having a special place in language use, formulaic expressions are the most important elements of a language system. These language units are related to cultural and social aspects of a language, as well as its semantic, syntactic, and morphological structure. It is important to examine the use of formulaic language units that concern various domains of the language in modern languages, as well as in historical languages. In this study, the use of formulaic language units (compounds, reduplications, idioms, proverbs, formulaic expressions (phrases)), which have an essential place in linguistic studies, in the Old Uyghur is examined. The Old Uyghur is an extremely rich language in terms of the use of formulaic language units. It will overstep the bounds of the study to consider all formulaic language units used in this period. Therefore, the study was limited to the language units which were formed with the names of the organs and, as a result, compounds, reduplications, idioms, proverbs, and formulaic expressions (phrases) created with the organ names in the Old Uyghur were examined. It was aimed to show that the Old Uyghur, and thus the Old Turkish, is a productive language by identifying the formulaic language units mainly formed with the organ names. It is highly noticeable that the organ names create formulaic expressions. Even in the earliest period of Turkish, the presence of such formulaic structures as kizlek oron 'private parts, genitalia', kaşanıg yolı 'urinary tract', et kırtış 'flesh, skin', agızıntın ün- 'pass someone’s lips, to say' etc. reveal that Turkish is productive and there is a deep structure of meaning.
Keywords
Old Turkish, Old Uyghur, organ names, formulaic language