The word-formation potential of affixes in the ancient Turkic runic texts

Abstract

In the era of the Old Turkic Khaganates, a full-fledged structure of the
Turkic word was formed in the runic language. Historical relics of the protoTurkic protoforms are still preserved in the root morphemes: primary roots,
verb-nominal syncretism, and sound-phonemic variability of roots. In the
language of runic monuments the corpus of service morphemes after the root
– the affixes – was quite well developed, so there was a quite well developed
system of morphology and derivation in the Proto-Turkic language. These
service morphemes can be functionally classified as formative and wordformative. The purpose of the article is to reveal the functions and meanings
of Old Turkic word-formation affixes.
The basic unit of affixal word-formation is a word forming component, in
which the formal semantic connection between the generating and derivative
stems is determined by semantic motivation. In the case of direct motivation,
the meaning of a derived word is formed from the meanings of the generating
word and the word-forming affix.
The affixes involved in word formation have a word-forming function, and
their word-forming meaning is determined by the system-forming function.
The author shows the diversity of word-formation meanings. The meanings
of old Turkic affixes survived in the modern Turkic languages.