Languages and cultures of Central Asia

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Herewith, I wish to announce the publication of a stupendous Festschrift in honor of András Róna-Tas’s 90th birthday. 

András Róna-Tas, distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Szeged, Hungary, winner of several international prestigious prizes, has devoted his long academic career to the study of Chuvash, Turkic elements in Hungarian, Mongolic-Tibetan linguistic contacts, the Para-Mongolic language Khitan and other Central Asian languages and cultures.

This book, presented to him on the occasion of his 90th birthday, contains a collection of papers in Turkic and Mongolic Studies, with a focus on the literacy, culture, and languages of the steppe civilizations. It is organized in three sections: Turkic Studies, Mongolic Studies, and Linguistic and cultural contacts of Altaic languages. It contains papers by some of the most renowned experts in Central Asia Studies.

Here are the title and publication data:

Historical Linguistics and Philology of Central Asia:  Essays in Turkic and Mongolic Studies

Series:  Languages of Asia, Volume: 26

Volume Editor: Bayarma Khabtagaeva

As may readily be seen from the Table of Contents, copied below, there's something for practically everyone in this magnificent volume.

Part 1 Turkic Studies

1 Pilot Entries of the Chuvash Etymological Dictionary under Preparation
Author: Klára Agyagási
Pages:
    3–14

2 The Northwest Karaim Lord’s Prayer
Author: Éva Á. Csató
Pages:
    15–28

3 Turkic Lexical Borrowability in China
Author: Marcel Erdal
Pages:
    29–38

4 The Kaepiči [Каепичи]
Author: Peter Golden
Pages:
    39–89

5 Auf dem Wege der imperialen Eingliederung: Das Testament von ʿAlīkey Atalïq aus dem Jahre 1639
Author: Mária Ivanics
Pages:
    90–118

6 The Chuvash Aorist
Author: Lars Johanson
Pages:
    119–127

7 Zu den ‚gelehrten Entlehnungen‘ indischer Herkunft im Alttürkischen
Author: Jens Peter Laut
Pages:
    128–151

8 The Presentation of Kazakh Literature in Hungary
Author: Raushangul Mukusheva
Pages:
    152–162

9 Some Characteristics of Cardinal Numerals between 2 and 19 in Karaim Bible Translations: New Results Based on New Karaim Materials
Author: Zsuzsanna Olach
Pages:
    163–175

10 Süci/sücü ‘wine’: The Career of an Old Turkic Word in Classical Anatolian and Ottoman Turkish Poetry
Author: Benedek Péri
Pages:
    176–187

11 Sturtevant’s Law and Chuvash
Author: Uli Schamiloglu
Pages:
    188–200

12 Magic, Sorcery and Related Terms in Early Turkic
Author: Jens Wilkens
Pages:
    201–226

13 On the Expanded and Revised Second Edition of the Historical and Etymological Dictionary of the Turkish by Andreas Tietze
Author: Emine Yılmaz
Pages:
    227–237

14 Baumwolle und Indigo
Author: Peter Zieme
Pages:
    238–248

Part 2 Mongolic Studies

15 Handle with Care! The Limits of Use of Manuscripts Demonstrated on the Hua-Yi yiyu Texts of the National Central Library
Author: Ákos Bertalan Apatóczky
Pages:
    251–260

16 Kalmyk Pipe and Mongolian Snuff Tobacco—as Means of Communication
Based on Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna’s Linguistic Records, 1871–1873
Author: Ágnes Birtalan
Pages:
    261–279

17 Issues of Comparative Uralic and Altaic Studies (9): Medial Intervocalic *k and *g in Mongolic
Author: Juha Janhunen
Pages:
    280–297

18 Mongol kiged: A Verbal Adverb as Conjunction and Verbal Noun
Author: György Kara
Pages:
    298–310

19 The ‘Oirat Fragment’ in the Erdeni tunumal neretü sudur and Its Linguistic Value
Author: Pavel Rykin
Pages:
    311–343

20 A Previously Unknown Middle Mongolian Fragment from Pelliot Xixia Collection in the Bibliotèque Nationale de France
Author: Alexander Vovin
Pages:
    344–353

21 Opfere im Tempel des Konfuzius! Ein kleiner Almanach der frühen Cing Zeit
Author: Michael Weiers
Pages:
    354–364

22 On the Phonetic Value of Some Glyphs of Khitan Small Script
Author: Wu Yingzhe
Pages:
    365–372

Part 3 Linguistic and Cultural Contacts of Altaic Languages

23 An Enigmatic Name for Wild Pears in Zazaki: A Study on Names of Pears in Asia Minor
Author: Uwe Bläsing
Pages:
    375–393

24 Similarities in Hungarian and Turkic Folk Literature: Folktales
Author: Éva Csáki
Pages:
    394–399

25 The Arabic and Persian Layer of Names of Chuvash Mythical Creatures
Author: Edina Dallos
Pages:
    400–419

26 On Perfectly Good-Looking Morphological Comparanda and Their (Sometimes, However, Lacking) Significance for Hypotheses of Language Relationship
Some Marginal Footnotes on the (Still Ongoing?) Altaic Debate
Author: Stefan Georg
Pages:
    420–428

27 Siberian Draculesses
Author: Elisabetta Ragagnin
Pages:
    429–441

28 A Recently Discovered Inner Mongolian Pentatonic Fifth Shifting Tunes, and Their Turkic and Hungarian Connections
Author: János Sipos
Pages:
    442–462

29 Turcica and Mongolica in Muʿīn al-Dīn Naṭanzī’s Muntakhab al-Tavārīkh
Author: István Vásáry
Pages:
    463–472

30 On Color Terms in Dagur
Author: Bayarma Khabtagaeva
Pages:
    473–497

What riches are inspired by the towering achievements of an eminent nonagenarian of the likes of András Róna-Tas, one, moreover, who is still working, publishing new materials on the Khitan language!

 

Selected readings



6 Comments

  1. cameron said,

    May 18, 2022 @ 8:14 am

    Siberian Draculesses!

    Indeed, something for everyone . . .

  2. Pau Amma said,

    May 18, 2022 @ 12:45 pm

    "20 A Previously Unknown Middle Mongolian Fragment from Pelliot Xixia Collection in the Bibliotèque Nationale de France"

    Misspelling reported. (It's "Bibliothèque".)

  3. Andreas Johansson said,

    May 20, 2022 @ 2:14 am

    21 Opfere im Tempel des Konfuzius! Ein kleiner Almanach der frühen Cing Zeit
    Author: Michael Weiers

    I see that tongyong pinyin is still out there.

  4. Chris Button said,

    May 20, 2022 @ 9:18 am

    There are some interesting looking pieces in here. This one in particular sounds really interesting to me:

    On Perfectly Good-Looking Morphological Comparanda and Their (Sometimes, However, Lacking) Significance for Hypotheses of Language Relationship
    Some Marginal Footnotes on the (Still Ongoing?) Altaic Debate
    Author: Stefan Georg

    Pulleyblank tried a similar approach with Indo-European and Chinese. Many (not all) of his observations on Indo-European were very insightful (as Eric Hamp’s response to Pulleyblank’s 1996 article showed), but the evidence of an actual relationship outside of language contact did not gain support and was not convincing in my opinion.

  5. M. said,

    May 21, 2022 @ 11:16 am

    Is "marginal footnotes" not tautologous?

  6. Philip Taylor said,

    May 22, 2022 @ 1:49 pm

    I would have thought "oxymoronic" rather than "tautologous", unless (as I very much suspect) the author was using the phrase metaphorically.

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