History and Typology of the Instrumental Case (Based on the Comparative Study of the Literary Documents in Turkic Languages)

Abstract

This article touches upon the research, which employing comparative historical approach has been carried on about the instrument-togetherness (instrumental) case – the seventh case of noun, which is used in most of the Turkic languages, but has been removed from grammar books after becoming archaic in the Azerbaijani literary language. This case, having kept its place in the history of development of the Azerbaijani language is still evident in stabilised state within some lexical units through the suffixes –?n, in, which are the morphological indicators of the instrumental case. As postpositions birl?, bil?, il?, -la, -l? denote togetherness, this has caused the expulsion of the instrumental case from among the case paradigm. This article uses the samples selected from the XV century literary works, analyzes the morphological indicators of this ancient case, and compares them to the sources in other Turkic languages.