アイデンティティと言語変容 : チュルク化のプロセスをおって

Abstract

Between the identification of an ethnicity and its language there exists a strong corelation. Language changes as it is, and then, it never fails to be accompanied with some kinds of influence on the ethnic community as well as on the language community. The Turkic language family spread in the vast area of Central Eurasia and Siberia in the last 1000 years. The Turkic languages spread from their original place, which is considered to be the Mongolian High Land, westwards to Republic of Turkey, eastwards to the Trans-Altai region and then, afterwards, northwards to Yakut-Saxa Republic in Russian Federation today. The process of this "Turkicalization" was ended up at last to the Tajmyr Autonomous Region in far most north with the formation of Dolgan language community. In the process of formation of Turkic Language Area, a lot of non-Turkic languages were involved. In some cases the process resulted in a total shift of the languages : some aboriginal languages were replaced by newly selected Turkic languages. In other cases, a language ethnicity merged with another language community and the new language community was formed with a newly revised Turkic dialect. In this paper we discussed on the theme of "identification and language change, " tracing the process of the formation of Turkic Language Area as a good example of explaining various linguistic situations.