Schönig Claus#

Short laudatio by Barbara Kellner-Heinkele:#

Turkology in the sense of comprehensive linguistic research in the historical (extinct) and modem Turkic languages (spoken today by ca. 150 Mio. people) was founded, as a modem academic field, iathe 1930s. Ever since, it developed in international cooperation of scholars, particularly from the Soviet Union, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Hungary and Turkey. Claus Schonig is a disciple of the eminent second-generation Turkologist and Mongolist (Altaist) Johannes Benzing and now one of the leading international authorities in this field in his own right. In a time, when extreme focussing on one language of the Turkic language family or one linguistic feature can only lead to limited results, Schonig, with his stupendous command of languages and of primary materials, combined with an acute awareness of the intematinal progress of common linguistic theory, has produced a large set of works that are both solid and innovative (3 monographs, 53 articles plus 9 in print, 5 ed. or co-ed. volumes, numerous encyclopaedia articles and reviews). While his book on modem Tatar (1984) and related articles became classics for the study of this language, his sustained work on the little known South-Siberian Turkic languages made him the leading scholar in this field outside the Soviet Union/Russian Federation. Here, he is particularly interested in the genesis of the languages in question, how they are interrelated, and how they are influenced by other, non-Turkic (Mongolie, Tunguzie, Palaoasiatic) languages in the area, tying his linguistic results always into the context of historical evidence.
His interest in the contacts of the Siberian and Kipchak (NW) groups of the Turkic language family led Schonig into a major project on Chaghatay, the literary language of Central Asia with a huge literary heritage (14th - early 20th c.) His seminal monograph on the complex of predicative clauses of the 16th c. Babur-name (Habilitation thesis, publ. 1997) is the first comprehensive linguistic study of a large Chaghatay text. It has since become a model for any study on the semantics of syntax of any Turkic historical text.
Basic topic of Turkological research, the classification of the Turkic languages, which has occupied generations of Turkologists, forms another main field of Schonig’s research interests. In a set of three large articles (1997a, 1997b, 1998), he has proposed a new approach which has drawn much international acclaim. Here, he does not only rely on bare phenomena of phonology and morphology as was done in earlier attempts, but he also includes all aspects of Turkic grammar in a diachronical and synchronical way while verifying the results by contrasting them with the facts of the historical movement of the Turkic peoples.
In recent years, Schonig became more and more interested in the language contacts of the historical and modem Turkic and Mongolie peoples showing in a monograph (2000) and several articles the mutual borrowings of vocabulary and morphology while pointing at semantic changes. On the basis of a large collection of data, he was able to clarify a complex of questions regarding the Turkic-Mongolic relationship which remained disputed over decades. This work is particularly important for our understanding of the origins and development of the Oghuzic group of Turkic languages to which, among others, belongs modem (Turkey) Turkish.
Schonig is not only a predominant scholar whose work is internationally recognized and greatly contributed to the development of Turkic and Mongolie linguistics, but he is also a leading figure in organizing international research cooperation. Particularly in the years when he was the main researcher at the Orient-Institut der DMG (Istanbul, 1993-1996) and since 2001 in his capacity as the head of this institution, he has initiated and organized a considerable number of international symposia and conferences, while, at the same time, directing/participating numerous research projects covering the fields of languages, history, literature and culture of Turkey, the Turkic word and the Middle East which were and are carried out by researcher from different countries and funded by a variety of international foundations.

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