Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
4. Uluslararası Balkanlarda Türkçe Öğretimi ve Türkoloji Sempozyumu, Konya, Türkiye, 5 - 07 Kasım 2025, ss.79-80, (Özet Bildiri)
This paper
examines the polysemous structure, historical evolution, and transition of the
Turkish word baş into the Balkan languages within the historical and cultural
depth of Turkish. In Turkish, baş does not only denote a physical body part,
but is also associated with numerous abstract concepts such as direction,
leadership, beginning, degree, importance, value, quantity, and social status.
This multilayered semantic structure demonstrates that throughout history the
word has assumed different functions and enriched itself by adapting to various
contexts.
Within the scope
of the research, the uses of baş have been analyzed in different stages of
Turkish, beginning with the Old Turkic inscriptions and extending to Old
Uyghur, Karakhanid, Khwarezmian, Kipchak, Chaghatay, Old Anatolian, and Ottoman
Turkic texts. At the same time, works such as Drevnetyurkskiy Slovar, Ėtimologičeskij
Slovar’ Tjurkskix Jazykov, Versuch Eines Etymologischen Wörterbuchs der
Türksprachen, and An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century
Turkish have been consulted to shed light on the etymological development
of the word.
The study employs
both diachronic and synchronic methods. While the historical development of the
word in Turkish has been traced through dictionary surveys and textual
contexts, its contemporary reflections in Modern Turkish, Bosnian, and Albanian
have been assessed through modern dictionaries (for Modern Turkish, the Güncel
Türkçe Sözlük published by the Türk Dil Kurumu and the Ötüken Sözlük
have been taken as the basis), digital corpora, and examples of usage. It has
been determined that in Bosnian, the form baš generally functions as an
emphatic or intensifying element, whereas in Albanian, the form bash has
acquired meanings related to direction, association, and priority.
In this context,
the study traces the semantic journey of the word baş, revealing both
its semantic richness within Turkish and the formal and semantic
transformations it has undergone through language contact. Thus, it sheds light
on processes of cross-linguistic interaction and conceptual transfer.