В. Г. Гузев. Избранное

487 The Turkic Runic script: Is the hypothesis of its indigenous origin no more viable? cant is the existence of the triad c , k , q ; these letters had the names “ce”, “ka”, “ku”, and were differentiated according to the vowel following the consonant in the text: e, a or u. It is quite clear what this signifies, namely, the existence, at an earlier stage, of a syllabic script where c was read “ke”, k — “ka” and q — “ku”, so that the spelling out of the vowel was superfluous: the signs in question themselves represented the sequence “consonant plus vowel”.) As for the so called “global signs” or “ligatures”, i.e. signs for consonan- tal sequences which have been a subject of a vivid discussion in the litera- ture, they Isere mostly interpreted as having been the result of two graphemes fused (especially in publications of O. N. Tuna) 1 . It is noteworthy in this respect that the first component of all extant or supposed clusters in question is represented by ji sonorant: nt , lt , nč , rt (?). Taking into consideration that one of the Turkic syllabic types has the VCC structure and that the first com- ponent of the Turkic consonantal clusters in general can be either a fricative or a, sonorant it appears quite possible that the “ligatures” are nothing else but former syllabograms for ‘lie following syllables: ant , alt , anč , art (?). It was as early as in the publications of V. Thomsen concerning the OTRS that an obvious contradiction emerged, which was reproduced by a number of other authors. It consists on the one hand in the aspiration of finding a foreign source of this script: “La source d’où est tirèe I’origine de l’alphabet turc sinon immédiatement, du moins par intermédiaire, c’est la forme de l’alphabet semiti que qu’on appelle araméenne. C’est ce que prouvent quan- tité de ressemblances spéciale dans la forme et la signification des lettres, outre que la direction de l’écriture de droite à gauche concorde aussi particu- lièrement bien avec cela” 2 . On the other hand, the conviction in the pictorial origin of some of the consonantic signs. V. Thomsen again: “Toutefois, en ce qui concerne uncertain nombre de ces signes, il ne parît pas douteux qu’ils soient en dernière analyse idéographiques, représentant un objet déterminé dont la dénomination turque se reflète dans la valeur phonétique du signe. C’est ainsi que, selon toute probabilité, Y j 1 , a j n’est rien autre que l’image de la lune; turc aj , q oq, uq est celle d’une flèche, turc oq ; b b 2 , ä b reproduit la tente turque, äb , avec son grillage caractéristique ( käräkü ) en bas et sa toi- ture en feutre <...> Ces rapprochements, quià mon avis, sont incontestables, font soupçonner qu’ily a d’autres signes dont il faut expliquer l’origine par la même voie, quoique elle soit moins évidente et encore très douteuse” 3 . As a hypothesis V. Thomsen gives some more examples, admitting at the same 1 Pritsak O., op. cit., p. 87; Róna-Tas A., op. cit., p. 10, 12; Tun O. N. a, op. cit., p. 15. 2 Thomsen V., op. cit. P. 73–74. 3 Thomsen V., op. cit. P. 78–79.