Oriental Studies (Dec 2023)
Zoonyms of Arab-Persian Origin in the Bashkir Language and Its Dialects
Abstract
Introduction. The article attempts a first analysis of animal names of Arab-Persian origin in standard Bashkir and its dialects in their relation to other Turkic languages. Goals. The study aims to identify and systematize this lexical/thematic group of borrowings to Bashkir and its dialects, identify word-formation patterns of such borrowings, reveal how and when these lexemes appeared in Turkic languages. Materials and methods. The work explores a variety of available dictionaries to provide a most complete selection of animal names of Arab-Persian origin in standard Bashkir and its dialects. The employed research methods include the lexical/semantic and descriptive ones, those of structural, comparative and diachronic analysis, as well as the etymological method. Results. The paper introduces a comparative analysis of the mentioned zoonyms against ones traced in other Turkic (sometimes even Altaic at large) languages, provides insights into their etymologies, and determines approximate chronological boundaries of when the loanwords occurred in the Turkic languages. Our lexical/thematic classification efforts have yielded a number of name groups, such as ‘mammals’, ‘birds’, ‘fish’, ‘insects’ and others. Special attention is paid to Arab-Persian lexemes expressing common animal names. The following word-formation patterns for the examined zoonyms have been identified: 1) borrowings in the form of ready-made root stems be divided into subgroups, such as exotic names, culturally significant words, and medical terms; 2) composite combinations clustering within two subgroups, such as attributive constructions with ezāfe particles and ones without the latter (incl. compounding). So the study attests to the share of names borrowed to the Turkic languages via books are used only in standard Bashkir or considered outdated to be found only in classical Bashkir literary texts. However, the share of animal names introduced orally can be traced exclusively in dialects and have correspondences of Bashkir origin in the standard language.
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