[Lingtyp] "na/nan" in Turkish

[Nicholas Kontovas]

Dear Raheleh,

The suffix -*nan* is a variant of the  comitative & instrumental clitic
("with") which in Standard Turkish is -*(y)lA* -- ultimately derived from a
postposition, the form of which is *ile* in the standard language.

In different places in Anatolia, and in the Oghuz dialects of Iran and
Azerbaijan, you can find variants of the postposition like *ilen*, *inen*,
*inan*, and *inaŋ*. Each of these also has a shorter bound form; so, -*nan*
would be an expected form in a dialect which used *inan* as the
postposition.

Ultimately, these all come from the postposition *birle* (attested in Old
Turkic and in the oldest recorded Oghuz), which is composed of the
independent morpheme *bir *"one" + -*lA,* an old adverb ending.

Hope that helps!

Best,

Niko

P.s. - The big *A*'s in the Turkish forms represent a vowel that varies
according to harmony between front *e* [ɛ/æ] and back* a *[a/ʌ].

On Thu, 22 Oct 2020, 17:17 Raheleh Izadi Far, <raheleh.izadifar at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Lyngtyp members,
>
> Does anybody here have any information about the word "na, nan" in
> Turkish? I'd be grateful to know about the meaning, functions, and origin
> of the postposition/suffix "na/nan" in Turkish language of Turkey or Iran,
> or other places.
> An example of its use in Iranian Turkish is "man ahmadi nan gediram" (I
> go with Ahmad."
>
> All the best,
> Raheleh Izadifar
> PhD in general linguistics, Iran
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