Abstract:

Regard and curses, in other words, prayers for best wishes and curses are the words a person sees as a starting point to reward somebody in return for a good behaviour or to punish him/her in return for a evil treatment. The purpose of the individual who prays for best wishes and curses is to wish reward and punishment from God which they cannot provide by themselves. Prayers for best wishes and curses can be customized; however, they are mostly sterotypical sentences varying from region to region. Antakya is also a region which attracts people’s attention with its prays for best wishes and curses. In addition to the common prays for best wishes and curses, there can be seen quite interesting ones peculiar to the region. For instance, black is known as a bad colour and when women in the area talk about an event, they usually add attraction to their expressions by saying “We bought coal may god not make you experience black days (Kömür aldık, Allah kara gün vermesin….)”. In this article, regards in Antakya have firstly been categorized according to their themes, and then they have been studied in view of their word syntagm features.

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