Medical Vocabulary in Middle Turkic Texts: Semantics and Revitalization Potential

The article examines the formation and development of medical vocabulary in the Middle Turkic period, as well as its semantic transformation in contemporary Kazakh medical terminology. Written monuments of the Middle Turkic era are valuable sources that preserve the linguistic, cultural, and scientific worldview of the Turkic peoples. In particular, the historical features and contemporary functioning of medical terms recorded in such works as Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, Kutadgu Bilig, and Shipagerlik Bayan are analysed from a historical-comparative perspective. The study employs historical-comparative, diachronic, and synchronic methods to identify processes of semantic broadening, semantic narrowing, terminologization, and revitalization of a number of lexical units related to the field of medicine. In addition, the influence of Islamic civilization and the Arabic-Persian lexical layer on the formation of Turkic medical terminology is examined. The article determines the place of medieval Turkic medical treatises and ethnomedical sources within the language system and considers the possibilities of effectively using the national lexical resources in contemporary term formation. The study reveals the specific features of the revitalization in contemporary usage of the words obyr, zembil, sarysu, taj, kamfara, and qandauyr, which date back to the Middle Turkic period and have been preserved in the lexical stock of the Kazakh language through various pathways. It is also established that the medical vocabulary of the Middle Turkic period constitutes one of the historical foundations of contemporary Kazakh medical terminology. The historical-linguistic and cultural-cognitive continuity of the lexical units under consideration is identified and systematized.

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