Arabic Grammars of Turkic.

• Author: DANKOFF, ROBERT
• Position: Review

Arabic Grammars of Turkic. By ROBERT ERMERS. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics. vol. 28. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1999. Pp. xv + 435. HFI 199, $117.25.

"This study discusses the way Arabic grammarians analyse Turkic languages" (p. xiii). The book is a revision of the author's 1995 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Nijmegen. It is based on a thorough analysis of the ten extant grammars of Turkic written in Arabic before modern times. These range from the Karakhanid Diwan lugat al-turk of Mahmud al-Kasgari. c. 1075 ("Muhammad" on p. 16 is an error; the name is given correctly in the bibliography on p. 408) to the Ottoman al-Sudur al-dahabiyya wa-l-[qita.sup.[subset]] al-ahmadiyya ft l-luga al-turkiyya of Mawlah ibn Muhammad Salih, 1619. The majority are the so-called Mamluk-Qipcaq glossaries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Ermers builds upon, but goes far beyond, the earlier work on these glossaries by Omeljan Pritsak and others, and the work on al-Kasgari by James Kelly and Robert Dankoff.

The great strength of this study is the author's grounding in the classical Arabic grammarians. This allows him to relate each of the Turkic grammars to its sources in the Arabic tradition; to clarify their methods and their (sometimes bewildering) usage of technical terminology; and to draw comparative analyses of specific grammatical features, in particular, phonology and phonetics (pp. 67-162) and cases and markers (pp. 163-284). The study ends with a translation of one of the ten sources, Kitab al-idrak li-lisan al-atrak, by Abu Hayyan al-Andalusi, d. 1345 (pp. 305-82).

This is a solid contribution to the fields of Turkic and Arabic studies...