Abstract:

The Arabic language which began to affect Turkish when the Turks adopted Islam, caused the inclusion of many Arabic words within Turkish. These words were sometimes used as they were and sometimes with various alterations in pronunciations according to the vocal characteristics of Turkish and the words originating from the rich word processing system of Turkish were morphologically turned into Turkish. Some changes also occurred in the meanings of words according to the social structure, rich culture and rooted oral traditions of the Turks. These changes have caused the use of words in meanings different from the source language. The words adapted from Arabic are not used in the same meaning in all Turkish dialects and their meanings can vary from one dialect to another. In order to enlighten the vocabulary of the Tatar Turkish, which is among the present inheritors of the Kipchak Turkish and one of the Northwestern Turkish dialects, and has a rooted history and a solid literary language; it is of primary importance to examine the changes in its quotations from other languages. The Arabic words which have the greatest share among these quotations, have undergone various semantic changes in the Tatar Turkish. This study touches upon semantic changes of the Arabic words via the Tatar Turkish words. As a consequence, it has been determined that 208 out of 889 Arabic words have undergone a semantic change and the adapted Arabic words undergoing a semantic change in the Tatar Turkish constitutes 23.39% of the total Arabic words in this language. This means that approximately 1/4 of the Arabic words adapted to Tatar Turkish have undergone a semantic change.

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