An etymological and lexicologıcal note on the words for some ancient eurasian grain legume crops in Turkic languages

On their way to both Europe and Caucasus, during the 7th and 6th millennia BC, the most ancient Old World grain legume crops, such as pea (Pisum sativum L.), lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) and faba bean (Vicia faba L.), passed through the region of modern Turkey but also spread towards the original Altaic, and then, Turkic homeland. The assumption that at least some of these crops were known to the ancestors of the modern Turkic nations is confirmed by attesting the Proto-Altaic *bŭkrV, denoting pea and its descendant the Proto-Turkic *burčak, being responsible for all the words denoting pea in the majority of the modern Turkic languages and the borrowed Hungarian borsó. The Proto-Altaic root *zịăbsa, denoting lentil, gave the Proto-Turkic, *jasi-muk, with the same meaning and with numerous, morphologically well-preserved descendants in modern Turkic languages.

PDF

___

Georg, S. – P. A. Michalove – A. M. Ramer – P. J. Sidwell 1999. Telling general linguists about Altaic. In: Journal of Linguistics 35: 65-98.
Gombocz, Z. 1912. Die bulgarisch-türkische Lehnwörter in der ungarischen Sprache. In: Mémoires de la Société finno-ougrienne XXX: 251.
Hovsepyan, R. – G. Willcox 2007. The earliest finds of cultivated plants in Armenia: evidence from charred remains and crop processing residues in pisé from the Neolithic settlements of Aratashen and Aknashen. In: Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 17: 63-71.
Johanson, L. 1998. The history of Turkic. In: L. Johanson – É. Á. Csató (eds): The Turkic Languages. 81-125. Routledge, London - New York.
Lewis, M. P. 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. SIL International, Dallas.
Ljuština, M. - A. Mikić 2010. A brief review on the early distribution of pea (Pisum sativum L.) in Europe. In: Field and Vegetable Crops Research 47: 457-460.
Marinova, E. - Tz. Popova 2008. Cicer arietinum (chick pea) in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of Bulgaria: implications for cultural contacts with the neighbouring regions? In: Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 17: 73-80.
Mikić, A. 2009. Words denoting pea (Pisum sativum) in European languages. In: Pisum Genetics 41: 29-33.
Mikić, A. - B. Ćupina - V. Mihailović - M. Vasić - V.Đorđević 2008. Diversity of words denoting traditional annual legumes in modern European languages. In: Proceedings of the 18th European Association for Research on Plant Breeding (EUCARPIA) General Congress, Valencia, Spain, 9-12 September 2008, 193-197.
Mikić-Vragolić M. - A. Mikić - B. Ćupina – V. Mihailović – S. Vasiljević – Đ. Krstić – M. Vasić 2007. Words related to some annual legumes in Slavic and other Indo-European languages. In: A Periodical of Scientific Research on Field and Vegetable Crops 44: II: 91-96.
Miller, R. A. 1991. Genetic connections among the Altaic languages. In: S. M. Lamb – E. D. Mitchell (eds): Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages. 293–327. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
Nişanyan, S. 2002. Sözlerin Soyağaci: Çağdaş Türkçenin Etimolojik Sözlüğü [Family Tree of Words: Etymological Vocabulary of Modern Turkish]. Adam Yay, Istanbul. (in Turkish)
Starostin, S. A. 1991. The Altaic Problem and the Origin of the Japanese Language. Nauka, Moscow.
Starostin, S. – A. Dybo – O. Mudrak 2003. Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages. Brill, Leiden.
Tanno, K – G. Willcox 2006. The origins of cultivation of Cicer arietinum L. and Vicia faba L.: early finds from Tell el-Kerkh, north-west Syria, late 10th millennium B.P. In: Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 15: 197-204.
Zeven, A. C. – P. M. Zhukovsky 1975. Dictionary of Cultivated Plants and Their Centres of Diversity. Centre for Agricultural Publishing and Documentation, Wageningen.
Zohary, D. – M. Hopf 2000. Domestication of Plants in the Old World. University Press, Oxford.