Numbers in old Turkic: Structural and semantic approach

In this study, the number words in Old Turkic are dealt with in terms of structure, function and meaning. First of all, a corpus was created from the source texts of the Old Turkic period, and the runic inscriptions from this corpus were written in Mongolian region inscriptions, Yenisey inscriptions, Old Uighur texts Huastuanift, Altun Yaruk, Maitrisimit, Köŋül Tözin Okıtdaçı Nom, Sitātapatrādhāraṇī, Totenbuch and Old Uighur legal documents. Kutadgu Bilig was taken. The study consists of three parts. In the first part, the concept of number, the number capability of human beings, the concept of number in linguistics and number systems and numbers in Altai languages are emphasized. In the second part, the numbers in Old Turkic are classified and examined according to their structure and functions, namely the cardinals, the combined number words, the ordinals, the distributives and the indefinite number words. In the third part of the study, general information about semantics and word semantics has been given, then the samples obtained from the corpus have been examined under the related number title on the basis of word semantics. As a result of the study, it has been stated that the meanings of the number words have been changed according to the religious and cultural environments entered by the ancient Turks, and the effect of the culture in which the present culture has an effect on the language and therefore the meaning has been revealed. Key Words: Buddhism, Islam, Orkhon inscriptions, Manichaeism, Numbers, Old Turkic, Semantics, Yenisei inscriptions