The Turkic Languages examines the modern languages within this wide-ranging language family and gives an historical overview of their development.The first part covers generalities, providing an introduction to the grammatical traditions, subgrouping and writing systems of this language family. The latter part of the book focuses on descriptions of the individual languages themselves. Each language description gives an overview of the language followed by detail on phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis and dialects. The language chapters are similarly structured to enable the reader to access and compare information easily. Each chapter represents a self-contained article written by a recognised expert in the field. Suggestions are made for the most useful sources of further reading and the work is comprehensively indexed.

The volume contains contributions on contact-induced language change in situations in which one of the languages is a Turkic one. Most papers deal with cases of long-standing language contact. The geographic areas covered include the Balkans (Macedonian Turkish, Gagauz), Western Europe (Turkish-German, Turkish-Dutch contacts), Central Europe (Karaim), Turkey (Turkish-Kurdish, Turkish-Greek contacts, Old Ottoman Turkish), Iran (Turkic-Iranian contacts) and Siberia (Yakut-Tungusic contacts). The contributions focus on various phenomena of code interaction and on various types of structural changes in different contact settings. Several authors employ the Code Copying Model, which is presented in some detail in one of the articles.

The twenty two essays collected in Turkish Language, Literature and History offer insights into Turkish culture in the widest sense. Written by leaders in their fields from North America, Europe and Turkey, these essays cover a broad range of topics, focusing on various aspects of Turkish language, literature and history between the eighth century and the present. The chapters move between ancient and contemporary literature, exploring Sultan Selim’s interest in dream interpretation, translating newly uncovered poetry and exploring the works of Orhan Pamuk. Linguistic complexities of the Turkish language and dialects are analysed, while new translations of 16th century decrees offer insight into Ottoman justice and power. This is a festschrift volume published for the leading scholar Bob Dankoff, and the diverse topics covered in these essays reflect Dankoff’s valuable contributions to the study of Turkish language and literature. This cross-disciplinary book offers contributions from academics specialising in linguistics, history, literature and sociology, amongst others. As such, it is of key interest to scholars working in a variety of disciplines, with a focus on Turkish Studies.

Turkish is spoken by about fifty million people in Turkey and is the co-official language of Cyprus. Whilst Turkish has a number of properties that are similar to those of other Turkic languages, it has distinct and interesting characteristics which are given full coverage in this book. Jaklin Kornfilt provides a wealth of examples drawn from different levels of vocabulary: contemporary and old, official and colloquial. They are accompanied by a detailed grammatical analysis and English translation.