Colour terms in the bashkir language from the structural and semantic perspective

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to study the structural and semantic aspect of the color designations of the Bashkir language, considering in detail the names that are monolexemes, and the ways of forming morphemic and analytical forms of color names. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of research of such a plan, not only in Bashkir, but also in the Turkic languages in general. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the work for the first time in Turkic linguistics touches upon the problem of the appearance of lexemes not only for basic color designations, but also the formation of names for expressing shades, lightness, saturation, brightness and depth. The sources of examples for identifying the meanings of the word were dictionaries of the Bashkir language and data from the corpus of Bashkir prose, which includes 1256 works of various genres. The main methods of researching names in the Bashkir language will be: the comparative historical method – in the study of the origin of basic color designations, which will determine the existence of a phenomenon at different stages of language development; structural-semantic method – in the study of names both structurally and taking into account their meaning. The lexemes for color designations found in the Bashkir language can name spectral, non-spectral, achromatic colors, shades of color designations, as well as saturation, depth, brightness and lightness of color. These names can be both monolexemes and analytical constructions. In the course of the study, it was revealed that monolexemes denote color tones and shades of colors. Color designations in the form of degrees of adjectives convey lightness and color saturation. Analytical forms are expressed: 1) a combination of two color designations – color tone, shades and lightness; 2) a combination of an adjective and a color designation – color saturation; 3) a combination of a noun and a color designation – shades of colors and their saturation. As for the emergence of monolexemes, such basic color designations as spectral (qїðїl ‘red’, һarї ‘yellow’, jäšel ‘green’, kük ‘blue’), achromatic (aq ‘white’, qara ‘black’, һoro ‘gray’), non-spectral (kӧrän ‘brown’), tint (jerän ‘ginger’, al ‘pink, scarlet’). In the Bashkir language, borrowings from Persian and Arabic also function: zäŋgär ‘blue’, šämäxä ‘purple’, xänäwät ‘orange’. The color designations of the Bashkir language raise many questions not only among the foreign-speaking public, but also among native speakers, especially when it comes to ambiguous names for purple, orange colors, as well as designations of shades, lightness, saturation. In this regard, this study sheds light on many questions on the structural and semantic features of the color designations of the Bashkir language and can be used in the creation of textbooks, educational media projects and electronic resources.