В. Г. Гузев. Избранное

343 Some Puzzling Aspects of the Turkic Runiform Script As some of the authors overtly admit (Róna-Tas 1987: 8, Tuna 1990: l), their papers were inspired by D. D. Vasilyev’s monograph (1983 )， which summarizes all the existing paleographic data on OTRS. The general impression one gets from the above contributions is that some aspects of the Turkic Runiform script remain puzzling, while other aspects lend themselves to a variety of interpretations. On the whole, the authors prefer to analyze the outer appearance of the script rather than its inner logic. The former, of course, was more susceptible to external influences (ranging from the means of writing available to contacts with other cultures) and was, therefore, more likely to change over time. None of the authors makes much use of phonological and grammatical theories. The author of this paper fully agrees with O. Pritsak (1980:83) that the nature of OTRS should be determined more precisely; in other words, its inner structure needs to be further specified. However, O. Pritsak’s state- ment that V. Thomsen, like other scholars, believed he was dealing with a letter script seems too strong. To quote V. Thomsen (1984), “The number of individual signs immediately makes it plausible to suggest that this mys- terious writing is no usual alphabet with a certain sign for each separate sound but either a syllabic script or at least such in which signs for one and the same sound vary in certain limits depending on the conditions restrict- ing this sound.” The first puzzle involving the Turkic runic script is related to what is, perhaps, its most striking peculiarity, something which E. D. Polivanov (1929: 179) has called “consonantal dualism”. Eleven pairs of signs for ten consonants (nine pairs for the phonemes /b/, /d/, /g/, /y/, /l/, /n/, /r/, /s/, /t/ and two pairs for the consonant /k/) clearly reflect that there was palatal vowel harmony in the language of the texts, with one member of the pairs being used to render only back vowel words, word forms and formants, the other only front vowel words, word forms and formants. Considering the fact that in back vowel graphic words, the consonant /k/ is sometimes rendered in the inscriptions by yet another (the fifth) sign (ǰ), and that one of the two signs for /č / (“ič”) is used in front vowel words, there can be no question that from a quantitative point of view, no other script ever used by the Turks is as rich in the consonantal representation of palatal vowel harmony as OTRS. It is important to keep in mind that the modern Turkic systems of writing created by native speakers of the various Turkic languages do not represent this palatal vowel harmony through consonants at all. Consonantal dualism was one of the factors which led E. D. Polivanov (1929: 179) to believe that the runic alphabet was created by Turks for one of the Turkic languages. As Polivanov saw it, apart from the “etymology of