ABSTRACT
In fact, this dictionary is today also a gold mine for scholars who want to study words of foreign, e.g. Armenian or Greek, origin in Turkish dialects. However, its compilation had little to do with dialectology. The dialects spoken in the periphery of the Turkish-speaking areas, i.e. the West Rumelian and the Eastern Black Sea dialects, are the ones that have preserved most archaisms, but also the ones that show most contact-induced innovations. The ethnic aspect of Anatolian and Balkan dialects, i.e. the explanation of certain dialect features as due to the presence of different Turkish tribes or groups in the different areas through history, has been vaguely treated by some scholars. The treatment of word-internal and final velar stops in back environments constitutes one of the most conspicuous isoglosses in Anatolia. A characteristic typical of the Balkan dialects is the lack of infinitive constructions.
