The linguistic features of Chagatai Turkish, which is a natural heir of the Eastern Turkish language, incorporate elements of Oghuz and Kipchak Turkish, as well as the sound and morphological structures of Old Turkish. As Chagatai Turkish evolved into its classical form, it produced a corpus of works of great excellence. A detailed analysis of the phonetic and morphological features of these works reveals that Chagatai Turkish has incorporated certain linguistic elements of Old Turkish into its structure, transforming them into a distinctive feature. Additionally, some features are included in the texts as archaic elements. In the existing literature, the terms “arkaik”, “arkaizm”, “eskicil” and “eskicillik” are used interchangeably. In this article, the term “eskicil” is employed, and the archaic elements in Babur's works are identified. In accordance with the definition of the use of some phonetic and morphological elements that are unique to Old Turkic and not found in other Turkish dialects, Babur-nâme, Dîvân, Mübeyyen Der Fıkh and Risâle-i Vâlidiyye Tercümesi written by Babur were scanned. The obsolete elements were thus identified. Firstly, an overview of Babur’s works is provided, followed by an analysis of the identified anachronistic elements, which are categorised under the headings of “Phonetic Features” and “Morphological Features”. A few words in Babur's writings retain intrasyllabic and final /d/ and /b/ sounds, according to the study. The context of phonetic features is relevant to this observation. Additionally, it was discovered through study that several polysyllabic words retained their final /g/ and /g/ sounds. It was noted that Babur's texts occasionally employed the morphologically archaic suffix -GUlUK, which in Old Uyghur Turkish indicate need.
Babur, Chagatai Turkish, Old, Archaic