Abstract
THE LINGUISTIC PROFILE OF MANISA FOLK SONGS (An Interdisciplinary Study in the Context of Sound, Structure, Meaning, and Culture)
Folk-song texts collected from Manisa and its surrounding districts constitute a field of data that simultaneously carries the linguistic system and the social memory of the region. This study analyses that corpus on eight levels: thematic, phonetic, morphological, semantic, lexicological, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and cultural-linguistic. The theoretical basis of the analysis is drawn from Eroğlu (2017), who defines the türkü as an inseparable unity of lyric and melody; Akar (2018), who treats the language of folk songs as a field of historical testimony; and Demir (2014), who regards folk-song texts as primary material for dialect research. The study identifies distinct linguistic patterns in Manisa folk songs, including word-initial voicing (k- > g-), vowel narrowing, a high frequency of the rapidity suffix, postposition fusion, a metaphor-based semantic structure, and an archaic lexical stratum. These patterns point not merely to a local difference in pronunciation but to the systemic features of the western Anatolian dialect group. On the social level, the songs record marriage norms, gender roles, place-based belonging, and the entry of modern institutions into everyday life. Taken together, the findings show that Manisa folk songs are a multifunctional document type standing at the intersection of language and culture.
Keywords
Manisa folk songs, linguistic aspect, dialect, vocabulary, cultural linguistics, sociolinguistics, f