Co-Occurrence of the Adjectives SurUn and Xatu (a Case Study of the Kalmyk National Corpus and the Kalmyk Heroic Epic of Jangaf)

Abstract

The work clusters with studies that describe combinatorial properties of Kalmyk adjectives, the source materials being those of the Kalmyk National Corpus and the Kalmyk heroic epic of Jangar. The article studies lexical co-occurrence of the adjectives surUn ‘harsh, rough’ and xatu ‘hard, firm’. The study reveals that the range of their lexical compatibility is quite wide. These adjectives co-occur with nouns of certain lexical-semantic groups, including ones denoting individuals, animals, natural phenomena, military actions, bladed weapons, and somatisms, etc. The words surUn and xatu are similar in that both the adjectives are basically used in figurative meanings to characterize external displays (look): surUn хаШсе ‘stem look’, xatu ха1йс“ ‘firm look’. The most frequent combinations are those with nouns denoting ‘speech’, ‘voice’, ‘word’. When it comes to investigate co-occurrence of Kalmyk adjectives, it is necessary to take into account some national specifics: certain difficulties may arise during translation, since co-occurrence patterns for Kalmyk and Russian adjectives differ, and therefore it is difficult enough to choose equivalent words. A detailed study of the co-occurrence of adjectives allows a deeper identification of their semantics, extends their meanings.

Keywords

• co-occurrence
• adjective
• kalmyk language
• epic of jangar
• kalmyk national corpus