Persian words involved and their Semantic transformations in Azeri Turkish on both sides of the Aras River

The connection between Persian and Turkish has been very long and has been due to the rule of Islam and the cultural mixing of these two neighboring nations throughout history. In the meantime, many words have been traded between the two languages. The share of intentional Persian words is large, and this becomes apparent when it comes from the language of a Turkic-speaking Iranian people called the Azeri people. Due to the common political and cultural life with the Persian people, the land of Azerbaijan and the Azeri people is most influenced by the Persian language.Azerbaijan on both sides of the Aras River, although divided by the political developments of the last two centuries, but the extent of the influence of these two geographical areas of the Persian language is very significant, and as long as the geography of Greater Azerbaijan is in the shadow of Iranian cultural sovereignty, this influence has been the same. Since the period of fragmentation of borders, this people have had a different function in being influenced by the Persian language. South Azerbaijan in the present era uses contemporary Persian words of Iran in various political, social, economic, cultural, sports and other fields. This issue is something separate from the Old Persian loan words.On the other hand, the people of the Republic of Azerbaijan continue to use words inherited from the Persian language, and in order to make the official language of the country dynamic, they have started making words from the heart of Turkish or derived from Russian, Arabic, Persian and Latin. Thus, the contemporary Azeri language in Azerbaijan has become an international language and the people and rulers there organize their internal and external interactions with this language. The use of Persian words with contemporary meanings that are not known in Iranian Azerbaijan experiences a different life there, even in some cases the Persian language is unaware of it.

The observation of the above-mentioned cases motivated us to study the meanings of the words of Persian involved in the contemporary Azeri language, in the 21st century. Of course, the difference in the use of Persian words involved on both sides of the Aras River has been another aspect of the author's motivation in the present study.For this purpose, we relied on linguistic studies and theory of semantic domains, according to which lexical changes include three categories: lexical substitution, increase and decrease. Conceptual changes also include four categories: semantic allocation, expansion, promotion, and demotion. Out of these seven semantic domains, only three domains of substitution, semantic allocation and semantic expansion were adapted in the present article. Verbal or semantic stability was also considered.In this article, we intend to study the various changes in the semantic field, the frequently involved Persian words in the contemporary Azeri language, and determine the share of these semantic changes on both sides of the Aras River. It is assumed that the semantic changes of any word due to the transfer from one language to another is inevitable and the treatment of contemporary Azeri language with Persian words is included in this circle. However, differences in the political geography of the language also play a role in this semantic transformation.

The research in this article is based on the random selection of widely used contemporary words to limit the scope of discussion that has been obtained by reading books, articles, newspapers and the observation of mass media of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the speech of the Azerbaijani people of Iran has been the criterion. Also, this research is based on a descriptive and analytical method in the study of changes in the semantic domain of Persian words involved.The scope of the Azeri language studied in this article is limited to the contemporary period and the 21st century. Linguistic geography also includes the speakers of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the northwest of Iran.The volume of data is 22 commonly used words that are classified into three main topics: semantic expansion and verbal stability, semantic allocation and verbal stability, and lexical substitution and semantic stability.The present article considers the semantic domains of loan and widely used Persian words, which relies on the encyclopedic sources of Azeri, Persian and Arabic languages. Therefore, this research is conducted under three selected topics: semantic allocation, semantic development and lexical substitution.Semantic allocation means that the meaning of a word becomes more limited over time and covers only a part of its past meaning. Also, the purpose of expanding the meaning is to expand the meaning of a word, in a way that leads to the multi-meaning of that word and causes that word to be considered a unit in another semantic field. Then the term lexical substitution means that in this type of change, one word replaces another word and is used in the same sense of the previous words.

According to the results of this study, the Persian loan words in the contemporary Azeri language have undergone three changes in the semantic field as follows: From 22 selected words, most of the Persian words involved (12 cases) have undergone a semantic allocation phenomenon and have found a new meaning in the contemporary Azeri language. Some of them (4 cases) have a wide semantic circle compared to their Persian origin. Some of the words involved (6 cases) have followed the rule of lexical substitution. It should be noted that cases for lexical changes such as lexical increase and decrease were not found. It also did not yield conceptual changes such as promotion and demotion.In the semantic domains found, the conditions of political geography were effective and the use of Persian loan words on both sides of the Aras River appeared different from each other. In general, the share of semantic intrusion and use of Persian intentional words in the contemporary language of the Republic of Azerbaijan is higher due to the dynamics of the language in the national and international arenas.