A.E. Kulakovsky on the issues of the Yakut writing: the analysis of the epistolary heritage of classic master

Abstract

The paper presents the letters of Alexey Kulakovsky, who deeply understood the meaning of the language for the future Yakut people. The source study materials are five letters to contemporaries. The relevance of the study is explained by the growing interest in the history of national languages as the basis of the culture of peoples. The purpose of the study is to determine the importance of the main directions in Kulakovsky's creative searches for the preservation of his native language, which reveals controversial issues in the history of the study of Yakut literature in general. The letters reflect such questions as doubts among his contemporaries about the need to defend the rules of Yakut grammar, disbelief in the possibility of the establishment of literary norms in their native language. As a result of the study of the presented material, the author concluded that the issues of language in letters reveal a number of little-known facts on the scientific biography of Kulakovsky because the issues of updating his texts expand the interdisciplinary contexts of their analysis, taking into account the reflection in them of historical and social facts in the early twentieth century.