This volume presents a synchronic description of the phonology, morphology and lexicon of a local variety of modern Uyghur, which is mainly spoken in Turfan, one of the famous ancient cultural centres in the Silk Road. It includes three descriptive chapters, a rather large corpus of texts and a dialect vocabulary. Descriptive chapters focus mainly on actual and uniform phonological, morphological and lexical features distinguishing this local dialect from the standard form and other regional varieties of modern Uyghur, whereas the text part provides a comprehensive and reliable linguistic sample of all possible regional varieties of the Turfan dialect and presents a corpus of oral history and folk literature of the Turfan region, reflecting ethnological and geographical peculiarities of the local settlements. All data are given in International Phonetic Alphabet together with a direct translation as well as with linguistic and extra-linguistic explanations.

The book deals with Mongolian loanwords in the Kipchak Turkic languages Tatar and Bashkir of the Volga area. After the sudden rise of the Chingisid Empire, Middle Mongolian exerted a vehement influence on the languages spoken in the subdued territories. This was the case even in the north-western most part of the empire. Tatar and Bashkir borrowed numerous Middle Mongolian words that reflect the culture of the Mongols of that age. In the following centuries, this vocabulary underwent significant changes in phonetics, morphology, semantics, and stylistic values. Middle Mongolian is reflected differently even in the languages of the socalled Altaic family. The author examines changes on both the Mongolian and the Kipchak side. The material provides valuable data that document important processes of the language history of the region. The book tries to capture characteristic elements of a language contact that has resulted in a variety of substantial loans belonging to many different semantic layers.

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.

Building on the rich scholarly legacy of Gunnar Jarring, the Swedish Turkologist and diplomat, the fourteen contributions by sixteen authors representing a variety of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences provide an insight into ongoing research trends in Uyghur and Xinjiang Studies. In one way or other all the chapters explore how new research in the fields of history, linguistics, anthropology and folklore can contribute to our understanding of Xinjiang’s past and present, simultaneously pointing to those social and knowledge practices that Uyghurs today can claim as part of their traditions in order to reproduce and perpetuate their cultural identity. Contributors include: Ildikó Bellér-Hann, Rahile Dawut, Arienne Dwyer, Fredrik Fällman, Chris Hann, Dilmurat Mahmut, Takahiro Onuma, Alexandre Papas, Eric Schluessel, Birgit Schlyter, Joanne Smith Finley, Rune Steenberg Jun Sugawara, Äsäd Sulaiman, Abdurishid Yakup, Thierry Zarcone.

Meticulous renderings depict 9 dolls and 46 authentic costumes, including work clothes, winter wear, wedding outfits, more. Broad-brimmed, elaborately decorated hats and leg o' mutton sleeves for the women, derbies, walking canes, starched collars for the men. Descriptive notes.

The Turkic languages are spoken today in a vast geographical area stretching from southern Iran to the Arctic Ocean and from the Balkans to the great wall of China. There are currently 20 literary languages in the group, the most important among them being Turkish with over 70 million speakers; other major languages covered include Azeri, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Noghay, Tatar, Turkmen, Uyghur, Uzbek, Yakut, Yellow Uyghur and languages of Iran and South Siberia. The Turkic Languages is a reference book which brings together detailed discussions of the historical development and specialized linguistic structures and features of the languages in the Turkic family. Seen from a linguistic typology point of view, Turkic languages are particularly interesting because of their astonishing morphosyntactic regularity, their vast geographical distribution, and their great stability over time. This volume builds upon a work which has already become a defining classic of Turkic language study. The present, thoroughly revised edition updates and augments those authoritative accounts and reflects recent and ongoing developments in the languages themselves, as well as our further enhanced understanding of the relations and patterns of influence between them. The result is the fruit of decades-long experience in the teaching of the Turkic languages, their philology and literature, and also of a wealth of new insights into the linguistic phenomena and cultural interactions defining their development and use, both historically and in the present day. Each chapter combines modern linguistic analysis with traditional historical linguistics; a uniform structure allows for easy typological comparison between the individual languages. Written by an international team of experts, The Turkic Languages will be invaluable to students and researchers within linguistics, Turcology, and Near Eastern and Oriental Studies.