An Introduction to Turkology

by András Róna-Tas

Genres: Linguistics

170 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1993

Reviews

[Natta Kuiski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Approximately 64 out of the 110 pages of this slim book are dedicated to the detailed description of orthographical conventions and peculiarities of the various scripts used to write Turkic languages in the first millennium AD. On the other hand, there is no discussion about the grammatical structures of the Turkic languages, past or present, to speak of. There are a few pages touching on historical phonology that exist to support the author's views about the correct periodization of Turkic.

It is very odd and disappointing that a book which bills itself as introductory dedicates so much space to the minutiae of a topic (i.e. orthography) that would be most useful to those at a more advanced stage in their studies and no space to a topic (i.e. language structure) that would generally be of more use to a novice.

The first half of the book, which deals mostly with early Turkic history and very briefly with the genetic affiliation of Turkic and other Inner Asian languages, is good and appropriate for an introduction to Turkology. But as explained earlier, things go downhill from there and the author seems to have either forgotten who his target audience is, grossly miscalculated their knowledge base and the gaps they're looking to fill, or been the victim of an editor foisting an inappropriate title onto his book. (This last possibility is very unlikely to be the case, though, as the book does not seem to have had an editor at all, given the frequent typos, ungrammatical sentences, etc.)

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

A. Rona-Tas' AN INTRODUCTION TO TURKOLOGY appeared in the Studia Uralo-Altaic published by the University of Szeged in 1991. Rona-Tas is one of the most prominent scholars of the Turkic languages, and I was looking forward to reading his introduction to the field. He sketches the history of the Turkic peoples, from their rise on the world stage nearly two thousand years ago to their current habitations, the various branches of the Turkic language family, and the scripts used by the early speakers of Turkic.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty light and insubstantial book. Excepting tables, apprendices and the bibliography it comes to only 110 pages. Most of it reads like lecture outlines, and to complicate the clunky prose there are also some prominent typos. Quite often he writes about obscure issues as if the reader already knows them, and to use this book one would have to be constantly chasing bibliographical references.

Someone looking to discover the Turkic language family would be better off starting with Routledge's THE TURKIC LANGUAGES, and then go on to Menges' AN INTRODUCTION TO TURKIC STUDIES. Still, Rona-Tas' introduction does worth eventually encountering for its interesting arguments on the dating of rhotacism, as well as the presentation of the various scripts.