TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL FEATURES OF THE VERSIFIED CHAGATAY STORY K？Y？K-N？ME (STORY OF THE DOE)

K？yik-name / Geyik-name is one of the versified stories with multiple versions in which Prophet Muhammad’s compassionate personality is reflected over his helping a wounded doe who was fallen prey to a hunter. The text analysed in this study is distinguished from the versions in other dialects by being significantly shorter than others. It is a story with 52 couplets running on pages 20/2-22/2 (18a-20a) in a handwritten anthology (mecm？’a) numbered Beyaz？t 3626, which is kept in Beyaz？t State Library, Istanbul. By showing the word-initial /k/ and /t/ as a dominant quality, the text demonstrates general vocabularies and grammatical features of Chagatay Turkic. While not showing uniformity in use, the dative +？a/+ge in general doesn’t follow the palatal harmony. The text also rarely shows grammatical characteristics of Oghuz Turkic