Comparative Studies of Western Yugur Noun-Forming Affi xes Revisited

Western Yugur is a Turkic language which is nowadays on the verge of extinction and assimilation resulting from long-term interaction  with the Mongolian, Tibetan and Chinese languages. It seems relevant to study the development of the common Turkic  language and identify the reasons for the disintegration of the  language with evidence from Western Yugur which acts here as a  “canned linguistic structure” that has been isolated from the Turkic  language environment of Central Asia since the 8th-9th cc. and,  thus, has experienced the diverse and prolonged infl uence of  ethnolinguistic and historical processes “inside the belly” of the  Chinese, Tangut, Tibetan and Mongolian languages. Despite the  impact of the mentioned languages, Western Yugur is considered one of the ancient Turkic languages that has retained the common Turkic  proto-forms and features of development of Turkic languages in their initial stages. Comparative historical studies of noun-forming affixes in the language of ancient Turkic written monuments, Western Yugur, Kazakh of the Kipchak branch and Turkish of the Oghuz  branch make it possible to identify the common word-building  formants characteristic of the languages of the period under  consideration as well as the trends of development (of affixes) after  the Old Turkic period and their formation in each of the languages. 
The study shows that common noun-forming suffi xes characteristic of the 6th–10th cc. Turkic languages used to function within Western Yugur, Kazakh and other Turkic languages but in 1400–1500 years of their historical development those experienced a number of sound changes while the meanings and functions of the affixes, their  morphological features in the language of written monuments have  some similarities to affixes of pronouns. However, the  synharmonism discovered in the noun-forming suffixes in the  ancient written language has been completely retained by the  Turkish language, partly by the Western Yugur language and is not to be found in the Kazakh one.

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