The Epic of Jangar: Analyzing Lexemes of the Cluster ‘Clothes’

Abstract

Introduction. To understand and essentially conceive the epic text of the Ja n g a r it is definitely instrumental to examine specific features of its lexical structure. Goals. The work seeks to provide a linguistic analysis of lexemes denoting different clothing items and traced throughout the epic narrative. M ethods. The study employs the contextual and statistical methods, dictionary entry and valency analyses. Results. The conducted analysis makes it possible to identify and restore meanings of lexemes of the cluster ‘Clothes’, and specifically those denoting outer garments. Conclusions. The etymology of the lexeme y ^ ‘(fur) coat’ is restored within the Turkic language framework, the latter containing common Turkic stems *icuk ‘coat covered with fabric, (fur) coat with a covering’. The lexeme дах ‘dokha’ also proves an ancient Turkic borrowing: the noun ja yq u with the initial meaning ‘rain coat’ was borrowed into Mongolian as daku ‘fur coat with pelage set on the outside’. Subsequently, the word was borrowed from Kalmyk into Russian: доха ‘saiga fur coat with pelage set on the outside’. In modern Kalmyk, the lexeme девл is defined as ‘shuba, winter garment’. But the Ja n g a r epic employs the lexeme in two meanings: 1) ‘winter outer garment of furred skin, shuba, overcoat’, 2) ‘braided cover, surface coating’.

Keywords

• kalmyk language
• ja n g a r epic
• explanatory dictionary
• clothes
• meanings
• lexeme
• semantics
• corpus