Viguer and his "Elemens de la Langue Turque"

Abstract

Pierre François Viguier, who is a well-known Turkish philologist, composed a book on Turkish grammar and published it in 1790 at the French Palace in Beyoğlu, İstanbul, wıth the title Elemens de la Langue Turque. This work is important especially with respect to the fact that it present the Turkish phonology and shows successfully Turkish sound harmony -more specifically vowel harmonywhich is a key issue in Turkish language.
In this book, Turkish words are written with the Latin alphabet except a small seetion (pp. 284-295). The sounds which cannot be written distinctly with Arabic alphabet which are u/ü, o/ö, ılı, k/g, b/p, elç, d/t are shown with Latin alphabet.
Viguier, points out that he chose İstanbul dialect and especially the spoken language. When these words are examined we observe a close similarity between them and the words used today in İstanbul.
We believe that this work is a major source enables us to build o comparative historical phonology of the Turkish language.