King of Kings and Song of Songs: An Elative-Superlative Construction in Turkic Languages

Abstract

The article describes superlative, hyperlative and elative use of formally possessive constructions in a number of Turkic languages from a comparative perspective, analyzing their structural and semantic types as well as their pragmatic properties. Similar non-canonical possessive constructions are found all over Eurasia in languages belonging to various language families. One of the most unclear issues of such constructions is their origin. They could have emerged spontaneously in Turkic languages due to the inner stimuli of language development: a. From possessive reading of possessive constructions featuring the following semantic development: The construction “king of the kings” first referred to the ruler of a state consisting of subordinate kingdoms with their own rulers. For them, the emperor was “their king, the king of the kings of subordinated kingdoms”. Such constructions became a part of the pattern of titles’ formation, and due to the frequent use could develop the meaning of an extreme/high extent of the qualities associated with the notion expressed by the nominals used as their components. b. Old Turkic canonical superlative constructions could be used with and without the superlative marker on the parameter. The economy of language means could have contributed to emergence of non-canonical superlative constructions. c. These constructions could be a result of contacts of Turkic peoples and their languages with world religions and translation of their sacred books into Turkic (beginning with Buddhism and followed by Christianity and Islam). These internal developments (e.g. economy) could be supported by external influences (structural copying of Bible prototypes) and common cultural paradigms. These issues should be addressed in more detail in the future.