A structural and functional analysis of pronouns in Old Uyghur

In this study, the existence of pronouns in the works of the Old Uyghur period, the words and phrases derived from pronouns and their functional uses are examined. Pronouns of the Turkish language that have appeared since the first written sources of Turkish Language are words that represent persons, objects and concepts by replacing them. In addition to their basic functions, pronouns have been used for different functions with their simple forms and with contamination of inflectional suffixes since the first phase of Old Turkish. However, the use of pronouns in the Old Uyghur period, which constitutes the focal point of this study, has varied both structurally, semantically and functionally with the effect of the region where the Uyghurs lived and their socio-cultural environment there. While pronouns and words consisting of pronoun roots in Old Uyghur were used in grammatical functions such as adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and exclamation, they are also used, through lexicalization, to represent some concepts belonging to Buddhist terminology. The aim of this study is to reveal the structural and functional changes that the pronouns used in Old Uyghur have undergone in the historical process. In this direction, the works belonging to the Old Uyghur period were examined using the diachronic analysis method and the findings were evaluated.