[Discussion] Bir kitap tanıtma yazısı (Ingilizce)

[Gonul]

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>From gonul  Mon Sep 16 22:01:42 2002
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Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 00:04:41 +0200
Subject: [Turkoloji - Turkology] Bir kitap =?iso-8859-9?Q?tan=FDtma=20yaz=FDs=FD?=
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BOOK REVIEWS (ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS 42 NO. 2)


The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. GEOFFREY LEWIS.
Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 190. $60.00 (cloth).

Reviewed by Wolfgang-E. Scharlipp, University of Copenhagen

The Turkish language reform, or, as it is usually called in Turkey,
"language revolution" (dil inkilabi), has had an enormous effect on the
Turkish language, which has hardly been exaggerated in the literature.
It has led to a situation in which vocabulary is used in a way that can
be described as anarchic, such that even educated readers may not
understand what has been written. The aim of this book is to explain the
reasons behind this situation and developments that resulted in this
"language chaos."

If we state immediately that the book is very informative —especially
for the nonspecialist— and worthwhile reading, we do that because we
must begin with a criticism. However, right from the start, inside the
book cover, there is either an error or, at least, a misleading
statement: "This is the first full account of the transformation of
Ottoman Turkish into Modem Turkish." Thus the text starts. Now, what is
a "full account"? Does anything like that exist? And how complete can it
be if the process described is still under way?

There have been accounts of the Turkish language reform before, but
perhaps with the exception of Heyd (1954), none have been in English.
The reader will look in vain in Lewis's book for reference to Karl
Steuerwald's three volumes (1963-66) dedicated to the development of
Modem Turkish. How can they be unknown to Lewis? We can ask the same
about other books and articles on this topic written mostly in German
and French by, for example, Bazin (1978), Mansuroglu (1954), Rohrbom
(1987, 1993), and the present reviewer (Scharlipp 1978, 1995). It has
unfortunately become an unscientific habit of authors writing in English
to neglect literature written in languages other than their own. This
seems to be an increasing tendency, producing publications in which the
reader is offered "new results" of research that he could already have
read in publications written in other languages. In this case, the
present reviewer is even more concerned, as he belongs to that
generation of Turkologists who have, so to speak, grown up with Lewis's
(1967) excellent Turkish grammar.

As Lewis says in the introduction, his aim is to acquaint the general
reader with the Turkish language reform and to "provide students of
Turkish at every level with some useful and stimulating reading matter"
(p. 1). And stimulating it is. If by "general reader" is,meant someone
interested in language planning but unfamiliar with Turkish, then that
person can trustfully start reading the book, as all examples and
(sometimes very lengthy) quotations are translated into English. Often
Lewis gives examples of how similar changes would have affected the
English language in order to demonstrate his point. He thus clearly
shows how greatly the Turkish language was transformed by the reformers.

The next chapter includes a brief description of Ottoman Turkish and a
rather detailed description of the discussion, begun in the nineteenth
century, about the Ottoman language and whether or not to change it—and
if so, how. What was mainly discussed—especially during the last phase
of the Ottoman Empire and the first years of the Turkish republic—was
the question of how to make written Turkish a means of communication for
the general population, instead of a medium restricted to a highly
educated elite, as Ottoman had always been. With his numerous examples,
convincing arguments, and great eloquence, often accompanied by a
stimulating humor, the author deftly motivates and prepares the reader
for what is to come. The following chapter, "The New Alphabet," dealt
with at the end of this review, likewise has this purpose.

The main part of the book begins with chapter 4, "Atatürk and the
Language Reform until 1936," where Lewis not only gives a chronological
account of Atatürk's activities within the reform movement, but also
introduces him as a statesman, whose engagement in the language reform
was in part due to his great personal interest in the phenomenon of
"language" in general. This great interest can be observed today from
the various linguistic books displayed in Ataturk's personal library at
his mausoleum in Ankara. This certainly explains—within the framework of
modernizing (i.e., Westernizing) the country—Ataturk's energetic efforts
in changing the language and the guiding role he played in it. Not only
was the foundation of the Turkish Language Society (Turk Dil Kurumu,
founded in 1932 under the name Turk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti 'Society for
the Study of the Turkish Language') due to his initiative, but his great
interest in etymology led him to join the linguistic discussion, often
offering etymologies for Turkish words that are proof more of his
fantasy than of his scientific understanding.

Nevertheless, knowing this aspect of Ataturk's personality can
facilitate comprehension of the cult around his person, lasting to this
day. While personality cults around political leaders are usually
artificially created and deliberately practiced, lacking an objective
base, in the case of Ataturk we find a charismatic, educated individual
who not only guaranteed the survival of an independent Turkish state,
but also founded institutions for research and personally nurtured the
development of such vital human institutions as language and writing,
going so far as to decide on single letters of the newly introduced
alphabet.

It was an interest in etymology that caused Ataturk to accept the
theory, developed and presented to him by an Austrian linguist, that
became known as the "Sun Language Theory." Basically, this theory
proposed that language had begun with exclamations, first of all at
seeing the sun rise. The much more important aspect of this theory was
its postulation that Turkish was the first language to develop in this
way and that all other languages were nothing but offsprings of it.
Chapter 5 of the book provides an overview of this theory, highly
interesting, with many examples illustrating its method. This chapter
also includes public and academic reactions and discusses the hitherto
unsolved question of whether or not Ataturk accepted this method in
order to limit the constant purification of the Turkish language, in
that it enabled the use of words from other languages, since they were
already derived from Turkish. The fact that the reform continued and
developed an even more systematic character, however, would tend not to
support this supposition.

Chapter 6 deals with the activities of some of those reformers who
contributed their own suggestions of replacements for Arabic or Persian
loanwords. The following chapter, "Ingredients," a continuation of the
previous one, examines the topic in a different way— namely, by listing
some of the (partly invented) suffixes used in creating neologisms. Some
of these neologisms are given as examples and analyzed in order to
demonstrate how the suffixes in question were used. One aim of this
chapter is to show why the reformers were often accused of using old,
partly unproductive, suffixes in an incorrect way, for example, by
adding a deverbal noun suffix to a nominal stem. This question has been
studied in much more detail by Scharlipp (1978). The discussion of the
semantics of the suffixes used for creating neologisms could also have
profitted from Erdal's (1991) voluminous work, also not listed in the
references.

It is primarily in this and in the following chapter, which concentrate
on the replacement of Arabic and Persian words, that Lewis could have
referred to other scholars' works. While Lewis's description of the
procedure of creating new words leaves the reader with the impression
that arbitrariness prevailed over a methodology, Rohrbom (1987) and
(1993) try to determine the principles upon which the new creations were
based. At least a short discussion of these two opposing points of view
would have enriched Lewis's book.

The next chapter is dedicated to the creation of new technical terms in
different fields of science. Lewis draws attention to the conflict,
especially in medicine, by showing the dilemma of specialists when they
had to decide among three possibilities— Classical Arabic, international
terminology with which all the doctors had become acquainted, and the
newly coined term that the Language Society wanted to introduce. In this
chapter, some words about grammatical and linguistic terminology, of
interest to a great number of readers, would have been very useful.

Chapter 10, "The New Yoke" deals with what is seen as a new threat to
languages worldwide—the high number of Anglicisms, a situation that has
created the term türkilizce (< Türkçe 'Turkish language' + Ingilizce
'English language'). Loanwords from other European languages play a
minor role. During the past two decades, the Society has fumed its
attention to these words, proposing alternatives for them as well.

In the following chapter, Lewis asks, and later answers, the two
important questions: "Has the language reform eliminated the gap between
the language of the intellectuals and the language of the people?" and
"Has it impoverished the language?" (p. 140). His answer to the first
question is a limited "yes," and to the second, a full "yes." The second
answer certainly accounts for the subtitle of the book and for Lewis's
statement: "The vast resources of Ottoman Turkish were at the disposal
of the reformers. They did not have to perpetrate the whole exuberant
vocabulary; they were free to pick and choose; but they deliberately
elected to dissipate their heritage. They should have been aware of the
danger that their work would lead to a depletion of the vocabulary..."
(p. 150). Not all readers will agree with Lewis, but others (among them
the present reviewer) will find his argumentation convincing in this
regard.

In the final chapter, the author describes the present state of the
Language Society, which, for political reasons, lost its autonomous
status in 1983 and became part of the Atatiirk Cultural, Linguistic, and
Historical Institute (Atatiirk Kultiir, Dil ve Tarih Yiiksek Kurumu).

Finally, let us return to the chapter "The New Alphabet," in which one
of Lewis's statements betrays such a serious misconception of the
relationship between spoken and written language that it is necessary to
object to it. He writes: "Its intrinsic beauty aside, there is nothing
to be said in favour of the Arabo-Persian alphabet as a medium for
writing Turkish" (p. 27). By saying this, Lewis restates a completely
unfounded allegation, repeated constantly by almost every author who has
commented on the Arabic alphabet in connection with the Turkish
language. This great error comes from ignoring the fundamental
difference between an alphabet and its possible orthographies. By
introducing certain orthographical rules, the Arabic alphabet can be
made as suitable for Turkic languages as any other alphabet, as the
reformed Arabic writing systems for the Turkic languages in Eastern
Turkestan (Xinjiang) clearly demonstrate. It is a pity that the vast
literature on the relationships among phonetics, graphemics, and
semantics, especially from the last three decades, seems to be unknown
to many philologists.

In conclusion, although the present reviewer has felt obliged to note
several shortcomings in an otherwise important work, this book can and
must be recommended to anyone interested in the modem Turkish language.

References

Bazin, Louis
1978 La reform linguistique en Turquie. In La reform des langues, edited
by I. J. Fodor and C. Hagege, 155-77. Hamburg: Buske. Erdal, Marcel
1991 Old Turkic Word Formation: A Functional Approach to the Lexicon. 2
vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Heyd, Uriel
1954 Language Reform in Modem Turkey. Jerusalem: Israel Oriental
Society.
Lewis, Geoffrey L.
1967 Turkish Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mansuroglu, Mecdut
1954 Reforms et debats linguistiques en Turquie. Orbis: Bulletin
international de documentation linguistique 3(2): 395-99.
Rohrbom, Klaus
1987 Prinzipien und Methoden der Sprachplanung in der kemalistischen
Turkei.
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 137:332-56. 1993
Uber einige Kompositionsmuster im neologistischen Wortschatz des
Türkischen. Sprach- und Kulturkontakte der turkischen Volker:
Materialien der zweiten deutschen Turkologen-Konferenz, 13.-16. Juli
1990, edited by Jens - Peter Laut and Klaus Rohrbom, 139—54-
Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica 37. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz.
Scharlipp, Wolfgang-Ekkehard
1978 Untersuchungen zur Morphologie und Substitution turkeitiirkischer
Neologismen. Hamburg: Buske. 1995 Tiirkische Sprache, arabische Schrift:
ein Beispiel schrifthistorischer Akkulturation. Budapest: Akademiai
Kiado.
Steuerwald, Karl
1963-66 Untersuchungen zur turkischen Sprache der Gegenwart. 3 vols.
Berlin: Langenscheidt.
__________________________________________________________________

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