Lexicography

Persian lexicography in Anatolia or Asia Minor is a part of prominent linguistic activities that began in the sixth and seventh lunar centuries. According to historical documents, during the Ottoman period, the Persian language was profoundly noticed by Turkish people. It was considered one of the three languages (alsane-ye salase) ​​of the world of science (Turkish-Persian-Arabic) in that territory. The evidence of this claim is the large number of literary and educational works written in Persian in that territory. Among these works, dictionaries form a large group of works aimed at teaching the Persian language. Therefore, studying these dictionaries can help linguists find out language learning facts and know the status of the Persian language among the people of this land. In this article, the dictionaries containing the Persian words, either as the source or as the target language were looked for and reviewed. Most of the approximately 150 dictionaries gathered were in the form of manuscripts kept in Turkish and Iranian libraries. Out of this number, about 89% of the works were original contexts, and the rest were documents of previous studies. The results of this research have been presented statistically both in terms of the content regarding the language, form (prose or verse), purpose, and the subject and historical development. According to the findings, most dictionaries belong to the period of pre-Tanzimat, and the number of prose Persian-Turkish dictionaries was the maximum compared to other forms of dictionaries. Also, the maximum number of verse-formed dictionaries, mostly known as Tuhfe, was written during this period.

Among the authoritative dictionaries of Persian language, Borhān-i Qāti’ (lit. ‘Conclusive Proof’) is considered a turning point in the field of dictionary production, and it provides attractive data for applied linguistics studies in the field of lexicography. Borhān-i Qāti’, compiled in India in the 17th century by Moḥammad-Ḥosayn Khalaf Tabrīzī, is remarkable in several respects, but one of its features which does not seem to have received a proper attention, is its method of providing the pronunciation of its entries. In this reference, almost half of the entries have been given a pronunciation based on analogy, in which the entry word is echoed with a second-well known one, having the same phonotactics (distribution and arrangement of vowels and consonants), and distribution of vowels, and prosody pattern. This method was successfully practiced later on in another important but unfinished reference: Āsaf al-Loghāt (1906-1921). In This article, this pattern of presenting pronunciation is introduced and explained. Also it provides the readers with a list of the reference words which have been used to recognize the pronunciation of the other words, and the frequency of them will also be given and analyzed. The final list of this article presents those words which were believed to be “basic” or “core” by the compiler of Borhān-i Qāti’.