Acceso usuarios
Wolfgang Schweickard
In the wake of the Ottoman expansion during the early modern period, many Turkish loanwords made their way into European chronicles and travelogues. A special category of borrowings consists of compounds with the element ‑başı, which is formed from baş ‘head, chief’ and the possessive suffix ‑ı. Since the peculiarities of the Turkish language system were generally opaque to European authors, ‑başı was often confused with the Ottoman honorific title başa ‘pashaʼ (as seen in Italian casnadarbascia ‘head of the treasurers’ for haznadar başı or chapicibassa ‘head of the palace doorkeepersʼ for kapıcı başı). A particular issue arose with the Turkish term subaşı ‘bailiffʼ, ‘police superintendentʼ (< su/sü ‘army’, ‘soldier’ + ‑başı). In this case not only was ‑başı misinterpreted, but also the initial element su, which was understood as Latin sub or French sous in the sense of ‘under’ or ‘subordinate’. This led to the emergence of new forms such as soubascha in French, subpascha or unterwascha in German, and sottobassa in Italian, with the meaning ‘subordinate pashaʼ, a concept that is foreign to Turkish.
