PECULIARITIES OF KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY IN TURKIC LANGUAGES

ABSTRACT

The article under discussion examines the peculiarities of kinship terminology in the Turkic languages. The author of the article believes that all Turkic languages form a group of closely related languages, characterized by common genetic and typological features. Most scientists are usually guided only by comparative ethnographic data, comparing the kinship systems of different peoples. It has been proved that the peculiarities of the kinship systems are conditioned by the nature of social (in particular, family-marital) relations.

АННОТАЦИЯ

Данная статья рассматривает особенности терминологии родства в тюркских языках. Автор статьи считает, все тюркские языки образуют группу близкородственных языков, характеризующуюся общими генетическими и типологическими чертами. Большинство ученых оперируют обычно лишь сравнительно-этнографическими данными, сопоставляя системы родства различных народов. Им же доказано, что особенности систем родства обусловливаются характером о общественных (в частности, семейно-брачных) отношений.

Keywords: terminology, kinship, Turkic language, genetic, typological, traits, closely related languages, features, historian, ethnographer, approach.

Ключевые слова: терминология, родство, тюркский язык, генетический, типологический, черты, близкородственные языки, особенности, историк, этнограф, подход.

Kinship nominations in different languages of the world in recent decades have become the subject of study by a wide range of scholars: linguists, ethnologists, ethnographers, demographers, sociologists, historians and others. Forming a closed semantic field, kinship terminology reflects the system of kinship relations characteristic of the people speaking a given language, in a particular area and in a particular era. Kinship terminology belongs to that part of the language which cannot be studied without reference to extralinguistic data, and from its structure and semantics we can draw conclusions about the extralinguistic system behind it.

The nominations of kinship are of special interest for linguists, as they constitute the oldest and basic fund of the lexicon of any language. On the other hand, this linguistic material is often used in the works of ethnography and related disciplines to solve a number of problems related to the history of human society. The result of the cooperation of linguists and ethnographers was the creation of such an intermediate field of scientific research as ethnolinguistics.

Currently existing works reveal the issues of comparative study of kinship languages in terms of linguistic or ethnographic approaches. A retrospective analysis of studies devoted to the study of kinship terms has shown that the study of this layer of vocabulary is conducted mainly in terms of systematic approach, which does not allow to identify the exact composition of relevant features of kinship terms in the languages of different systems.

Studies of the kinship systems of Turkic-speaking peoples have been carried out by such researchers as Samoilovich, Dyrenkova, Pokrovskaya, Maksimov and others. In the last decades of the twentieth century, many researchers in Uzbek linguistics also began to address this issue, including Arifkhanova Z.Kh., Shoniyozov K., Doniyorov A.Kh., Alimova D.A., Zununova G.Sh., etc [5].

All Turkic languages form a group of closely related languages, characterized by common genetic and typological features. The common origin of the Turkic languages is expressed in extreme closeness of their grammatical structure and vocabulary. All modern Turkic languages and nationalities are derived as a whole growing group of languages, respectively the older languages of tribes and clans, the process of language development in various patrimonial unions and communities, which have left their specific traces, and created differences characteristic of each language [1]. The Uzbek language has a definite place among the Turkic languages of the Commonwealth of Independent States. If we look at the whole historical path of the development of Uzbek, it has contacted with other languages, as it does now. These contacts were reflected in the vocabulary of the Uzbek language and its dialects in the form of various borrowings from Arab-Iranian, Russian, Mongolian, and related Turkic languages [2] as well as all developed languages of the world have foreign-language borrowed words [3].

The system of kinship and properties of the Uzbeks has not been studied monographically in historical and ethnographic terms. The present work is an attempt to some extent to fill this gap and has the task to give a general description of the principles of construction of the Uzbek kinship system, to determine its relation to the kinship systems of other peoples of the Altay language family and to explain the origin of some features of this system. First, let us imagine a "genealogical tree" of Uzbek kinship terms according to the five-step Turanian-Hanonovan system, which is a classic example among all kinship systems:

II.! bobo/dedushka/grandfather; momo/babushka/grandmother

I.! ota/otets/father; ona/ mat’/mother

0! aka-uka /bratya/brothers; opa-singil/syostri/sisters

I.! o’gil/sin/son;  qiz/doch’/daughter

II.! nabira o’gil/vnuk/grandson; nabira qiz/vnuchka/granddaughter [1] .

This scheme presents a picture of the kinship system division by direct line, that is the nearest blood relatives, of the named person. But besides these notions of Uzbeks there are other names of persons by father, mother, brothers and sisters separately. So, for example, parents of father and mother are called "ota-bobo"/predki/ancestors; the term "aka" means both older brother and younger brother of father or mother, but older than the speaker and generally a relative or even a fellow villager older than the speaker but younger than his parents. The main peculiarity of the Turanian-Hanonovan system is the fusion of direct and lateral lines of kinship when distinguishing paternal and maternal lines as well as descendants of the opposite sex in the descending generations. As a rule, the terms of property (to denote the kinship of husband or wife) overlap with the terms of kinship. A distinctive feature of the descriptive systems is the clear identification of the direct line of descent, the designation by special terms of each of the parents, sons and daughters, grandchildren and granddaughters, the association between side lines of kinship and the presence of terms for uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, and in rare cases and cousins.

In addition to the above scheme, we can mention EGO's relatives: "aka"-brat/older brother, "uka"- bratishka/little brother, "opa"- sestra/older sister, "singil"- sestryonka/little sister of the speaker. A similar system of kinship in the direct lineage can be found in the kinship systems of other Turkic peoples. Thus, in Uzbeks we find "ota"/otets/father, "ona"/mat’/mother, "qarindosh"/rodstvenniki/relatives. The same terms are found in Bashkirs: "opa", "agai", "ata", "kyz", "ul", and in Kazakhs, Tatars, and other closely related peoples one can find the same terms of kinship in direct line [1]. This testifies to the interaction and mutual influence of the closely related Turkic languages at all times in their history of development. Therefore a comparative study of the terms in the kinship systems of the Uzbeks and other peoples belonging to the same language family with them proves that the specific features of the Turkic systems were formed in antiquity, apparently in the pre-Turkic era. This can be seen in the division of the EGO generations into older and younger halves, accompanied by the shifting of each of them with adjacent generations, which subsequently led to the so called sliding generational account.

References:

1. Alimov, T. A. O meste terminologii rodstva uzbekov sredi terminologii drugih turkoyazichnih narodov. [On the place of Uzbek kinship terminology among the terminologies of other Turkic peoples] // Molodoy uchyoniy. — 2015. — № 3 (83). P. 938-939. [in Russian]
2. Dospanov A. U. K voprosu kontaktov blizkorodstvennih turkskih yazikov. [On the question of contacts between closely related Turkic languages]  // Vestnik Akademii Nauk Respubliki Uzbekistan. – 1991 -  № 5. P. 98–100. [in Russian]     
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