Last Year, Next Year and the Year after That: on the Etymology of Three Turkic Temporal Adverbs

Abstract The present study examines three Old Turkic temporal adverbs designating past and future years, namely bïldïr ~ bïldur ‘last year’, arkun ‘next year’, and izi ‘year after next’, and proposes new etymologies for each. For bïldïr , an earlier compound is posited that consists of a Tocharian loanword and the etymon of Common Turkic yïl ‘year’. The form arkun is derived from a postulated verb * ark - ‘to send through’, with further derivatives adduced in support of this analysis. The item izi is connected with Yakut and Dolgan ähīl and interpreted as a crasis of * äzi yïl .