Porto - Demo Blog 5

Serial verb structures are generally a syntactic/grammatical technique frequently seen in certain languages in the world. Serial verb structures are particularly notable in the languages of West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Tibet. Serial verb structures are defined narrowly in the literature as “monoclausal consruction consisting of two or more verbs, with no argument-predicate (valency) relation between the verbs and no syntactic linking element (Haspeltmath, 2024; 2016). In the field of Old Uyghur, during the translation activities of Buddhist texts into Old Uyghur, many serial verb structures entered Old Uyghur through one-to-one translation from Chinese, where serial verb structures were frequently used, especially due to their typological features. Although it is not a syntactic technique in Old Uyghur religious texts, serial verb structures were frequently used as a form and technique of discourse. For this reason, many serial verbs are encountered in Old Uyghur. However, serial verbs fell out of use in Karakhanid Turkish and later periods, but it is seen that this borrowed discourse technique remained in Karakhanid Turkish through lexicalization. In Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Turk, some serial verbs that became elements of Karakhanid Turkish vocabulary through the lexicalization of serial structures were recorded. Kaşgarlı gives some examples of the sentences below such as arı-yowdı “cheat”, kurdı-yowdı “share”, urdı-tokıdı “beat”, ewürdi-tewürdi “turn”, kargadı-arkadı “defame” and in the explanations within the article, he states that one of the components is the main one and the other is dependent on it, and points out that such structures have become lexicalized. Kaşgarlı, in particular, points out that such structures are not Oghuz, and that the Oghuz express this with a single verb. These expressions indicate that they are remnants of serial verb structures that survived from Old Uyghur to Karakhanid Turkish. Although such serial verb structures are defined as reduplication in Old Uyghur studies, this approach does not agree with language and linguistics studies and findings in world. In this study, the serial verb remnants from Old Uyghur in DLT, the distinction between reduplication and serial verbs, and the basic features of serial verb structures and their lexicalization processes will be emphasized..

Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk, Karakhanid Turkish, serial verbs, verb compounds, lexicalization.