Nehcü’l-Ferâdîs in the Context of the In-Text Dictionary

Abstract

A dictionary, in its general terms, undertakes the task of helping the user of a language. Dictionaries have various qualities depending on their purpose: monolingual dictionary, bilingual dictionary, general dictionary, dictionary of idioms, student dictionaries etc. One of the reasons for creating dictionaries is to establish an independent dictionary of the language. On the orher hand, there are also texts that do not pursue this purpose but possess dictionary features. It is known that the texts of this type are referred to in the literature as works with intext dictionary feature/value due to their dictionary-like features. It is noteworthy that this feature facilitates the comprehensibility of the text. In this study, it is questioned whether Nehcü’l-Ferâdîs, which belongs to the Khwarezm Turkish period and is known as the first Turkish work in the forty hadith genre, has an in-text dictionary feature to ensure the comprehensibility of Islamic terminology. Descriptive research method was used in the study. Sections in which some lexemes in the text were treated and defined as entries in a dictionary by the author/copyist of the work were used as data. The ways in which these lexemes, which are emphasized and defined in accordance with the flow of the text, are handled as a lexical item, have been examined. It has been determined that the methods used in defining lexical units were full sentence definitions (typical, specific, and non-typical/non-specific full sentence definitions) and definitions by synonym/equivalent (such as definitions by synonymy, co-occurrence, and substitution/reference). In this respect, it has been concluded that Nehcü’l-Ferâdîs has the characteristics of an in-text dictionary.