Crimean Tatar
Darya Kavitskaya
Yale University
Crimean Tatar is a Turkic language of the West Kipchak subgroup, spoken mainly in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and in Uzbekistan, as well as in small communities in Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey. Crimean Tatar consists of three major dialects: the Central dialect is currently used as the standard variety while the Northern and Southern dialects are endangered.
The vowel system of standard Crimean Tatar distinguishes eight vowel phonemes. Crimean Tatar has backness and rounding harmony, as is the case in many Turkic languages (most notably, Turkish). However, rounding harmony is quite different from other Turkic languages, being licensed only by the first two syllables of the word.
The inflectional morphology of Crimean Tatar is exclusively suffixing, and derivational morphology makes use of both suffixation and compounding. Syntactically, Crimean Tatar uses the usual Turkic patterns; however, the word order is not strictly SOV, possibly reflecting Russian influence. Complex sentences are formed through the coordination of clauses with or without conjunctions. Fully embedded clauses are formed with non-finite verb forms such as participles and converbs. This book contains the first full description of Crimean Tatar to appear in English or in any other language. It covers all major aspects of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the Central dialect of Crimean Tatar, and it also mentions the unique features of the Northern and Southern dialects where possible. Three texts in Central, Northern, and Southern Crimean Tatar with interlinear glosses and English translation are included.
ISBN 9783895866906. Languages of the World/Materials 477. 140pp. 2010.
