Shaw Robert Barkley. A sketch of the Turki language as spoken in Eastern Turkistan (Kashgar and Yarkand)

Calcutta: C.B. Lewis, Baptist Mission Press, 1878. — 130 p. In two parts.It may seem strange that a language developed by the rude and nomad tribes of Central Asia, who in their own home have never known how to reduce it to rule (or rather to distinguish the laws through which they themselves had unconsciously formed it), should present in fact an example of symmetry in complexity such as few of the more cultivated forms of speech exhibit. Although its own people would have one believe that it is subject to no rule and almost purely arbitrary (their only notion of grammar being that of Arabic and Persian with which the Turki cannot be made to fit); yet in reality a few simple and transparent rules suffice to account for all its permutations. These rules, possessing an accumulative power, are enough to produce the immense variety of forms noticeable in the Eastern Turki. Viewed in this light the study of the Eastern Turki is seen to have an interest which is not to be measured by the amount of the commercial or other intercourse likely to be facilitated by it. For the Turkish tongues, a journey eastward is pretty nearly equivalent to a study of the earlier forms of an Indo-European language. In either case we get nearer to the source; and the less literary character of the former makes it easier to approach its origin in space than in time.