THE WORDS OF ASTRONOMY IN DIVANÜ LÛGATI’T-TÜRK

Research on vocabulary has an important place in historical and contemporary linguistic studies on Turkish language. Richness of languages evaluates by its vocabulary. Historical dictionaries are given importance to determine general Turkish vocabulary. Divanü Lûgati’t-Türk is one of the most significant works of Turkish language. In addition to it is a rich source points of historical progress and vocabulary of Turkish language. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the competence of Divanü Lûgati’t-Türk which is regarded as the oldest and the most essential dictionary of Turkish Language, written by Kâşgarlı Mahmud, in supplying equivalent terms for astronomy concepts. The findings and used terms on astronomy in Divanü Lûgati’t-Türk are very significant in order to show the level of east on astronomical and that the Turkish language developed very much in that time. Kâşgarlı Mahmud, mentions significant information about astronomy in Divanü Lûgati’t-Türk. Hence, in this article, will be examined the traces of astronomy on Turkish Language of 11th century according to Divanü Lûgati’t-Türk. After when examined carefully the Divanü Lûgati’t-Türk, it has been observed that, the sun and the moon, the day and the night and the summer and the winter are opposite positions each other for the Turkish people. While the sun, the day and the summer constitutes the main time concept for Turkish, the moon, the night and the darkness of the winter represent the badness and the disaster. It is known that in the modern Turkish language, some words show parallelism with Old Turkish. Therefore, the historical and contemporary Turkish dialects can be applied to explain words belonging to astronomy in vocabulary of Divanü Lûgati’t-Türk.