Jim,
These are questions that will probably never be answered with an absolute degree of certainty, and so by reading this thread, everyone has to do it with the understanding that the vast majority of anything written here is pure conjecture.
When it comes to the hilt form, it is best to start by looking at the earliest yataghans - most have probably seen Suleiman's, the Furusiyya Foundation book shows one belonging to Herzeg Khan made in the same workshop, and there is also Byazid II's yataghan. The early hilts tend to be similar to those of other Ottoman weapons from that time. None of them have eared pommels, those tend to appear later. The ears are a later development, and probably more connected to the need for a bigger pommel than to any femur symbolic meaning - in some areas the ears remained quite small well into the 19th century.
The blade is where we can all go wild with various theories. The downward curve is not something one finds in Central Asia (unless you want to go to Nepal and try to find similarities with khukris) so it does not seem likely that it was brought by the Seljuks and their Ottoman descendants. There are blades of similar shape in the Balkans from Antiquity - Thracian sicas and makhairas. Those obviously fell out of military use with the development of military technology and tactics in Late Antiquity and the Dark Ages. Eastern Roman sources, such as strategikons keep using the term makhaira, but more in the sense of a large knife/short sword and not referring to the ancient weapon form (see Kolias and Bruhn Hoffmeyer on the subject). However, just because the form used its military significance, it does not mean that it just disappeared for a millennium or so - it probably survived in a down sized version with utilitarian functions.
With the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans and the restrictions on arms the new Ottoman administration imposed on the peasant population, there was probably a need for a self defense weapon which was not subject to the restrictions, such as swords, but still allowed the bearer some real functionality in battle. Thus, the yataghan emerged in the Balkans in the 15th century as a really long knife. There are parallels with other cultures, from Central European bauerwehrs to arm daggers in the Sahel allowed to slaves and lower castes.
Regards,
Teodor
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