The vocabulary of Turkish proverbs, with the exception of a small number of works by Turkish linguists and folklorists devoted to the analysis of the use of certain words in paremias, remains unexplored. The article presents some results of statistical analysis of the vocabulary of more than five thousand Turkish proverbs. Such research provides an opportunity to better understand the linguistic worldview of the Turkish and, more broadly, the Turkic peoples. With the appearance of such works on the material of proverbs of other peoples, it will be possible to conduct comparative studies of the linguistic picture of the world in its folklore representation.

Proverbs of any nation contain extralinguistic information captured in words that name and characterize the objects and phenomena of the life of the bearers of the corresponding culture, their daily interaction and communication, and the realities of the surrounding reality. Vocabulary in proverbs is not momentary, but is inspired by the current state of affairs in politics, public life, art, everyday life, and fashion. It reflects phenomena that are relatively long-term or permanent, related to the ethno-cultural characteristics of the people's life, national character traits, religion and history.

Statistical analysis of the vocabulary of Turkish proverbs is a valuable source both for considering the traditional linguistic picture of the world, and for studying the linguistic and cultural-historical evolution of the carriers of the corresponding tradition. Based on such an analysis of the vocabulary, various conclusions can be drawn about the spiritual and material life of people, and in this case not only the Turks, but also other Turkic peoples, due to the unconditional existence of a common Turkic fund of paremias.

Yu. N. Karaulov, analyzing communicative needs, puts forward the idea of precedent texts and characterizes their role in the structure of language personality [Karaulov, 1987, pp. 216-237]. Case texts are defined as:: 1) significant for the individual in cognitive and emotional relations; 2) having a superpersonal character, i.e. well-known to the general environment of this person (including her predecessors and contemporaries); 3) the appeal to which is repeatedly renewed in the discourse of this language personality. Knowledge of case texts serves as an indicator of belonging to a given era and its culture, and their ignorance, on the contrary, is a prerequisite for rejection from it.

Yu. N. Karaulov believes that the complex and contradictory relations of knowledge and meanings that develop in the worldview of a language personality are realized in communication. Motivational factors play an important role in communication activities. As the study conducted by Yu. N. Karaulov shows, " texts that are precedent for a given language personality are woven into a rather dense network, "passing" through which its discourse, <...> we get "in the balance" those problems that this person considers vital,<...> we get a set of traits

page 80
Finally, we get a system of purely pragmatic criteria and assessments with which a linguistic personality approaches life situations, < ... > and, accordingly, a set of motives that determine its position and course of action" (Karaulov, 1987, p.235). All this experience, acquired by the language personality through texts, is fixed in the thesaurus.

Proverbs form one of the most stable and significant fragments of the corpus of precedent texts, especially when it comes to cultural and ethnic traditions. Thus, I. A. Sedakova notes that due to the laconism characteristic of cliched utterances, "the semantic load of each word becomes obvious < ... >" in paremia [Sedakova, 1999, p. 157].

According to Yu. I. Levin, "paremiologists are well aware that the meanings of the vast majority of proverbs are universals: for almost any proverb of a given people, one can almost always find a synonym among the proverbs of any other people; the differences relate almost exclusively to the subject-figurative sphere, without affecting the meanings" (Levin, 1984, p.122).

The statistical analysis of vocabulary in this paper is based on the corpus of Turkish paremias, numbering 5274 proverbs (collection of proverbs by M. Yurtbashi [, 1993]). They used 2782 different words, for each of which the frequency of use was calculated. Verbs and non-finite verb forms were not included in our statistical analysis due to their widespread desemantization when using proverbs in the function of predicates and polypredicative centers. The frequency indices of the corresponding lexical units are indicated in parentheses.

When analyzing the vocabulary of Turkish proverbs, it is clearly seen that their main character is a person, both as a reasonable living being and as a social person acting within the framework of family and social relations. The most common words are insan (127), adam (108), and (56). Trying to determine the difference between them, A. Chaykovskaya [Chaykovskaya, 1999, p.150] notes that the word is associated with the idea of a person as a being primarily physiobiological, most closely related to mother nature. The next stage is insan-a man born of a woman, a "son of man", a thinking, spiritual being, endowed with consciousness and will, a mature person with all the attributes of his powers and abilities, where the difference between a man and a woman is greatly leveled. The word adam marks a person as a social being, acting according to the ethical norms established by society, performing various social, hierarchically determined duties, where the difference between the sexes again becomes significant.

In our opinion, in the modern Turkish language, it is possible to distinguish more clearly by gender between the word insan, which denotes both a man and a woman, and the word adam, which in the vast majority of cases denotes only a man (here we can draw an analogy with the English lexeme man, which can denote both a man and a person in general, i.e.that is, a man and a woman, but at the same time representatives of feminist movements, who clearly regard its meaning as 'man', are actively fighting against the use of this word to refer to a person in general). The token is mainly used as a counting word.

When looking at the corpus of Turkish proverbs, it becomes obvious that there are strictly "male" areas and occupations (at least, this is how they are perceived by native Turkish speakers), for example, trade, war, public service, raising sons, science, etc., where only the word adam is used, and there are so-called universal values, where gender differences are not significant, so the word insan is used in such proverbs. As for the token

page 81
, then in the vast majority of cases, as already noted, it has a counting word function.

For Turkish society, the hierarchy within the family plays a very important role. The Turkish folklorist N. Muallimoglu points out that "when we carefully read Turkish proverbs, we see that the old Turkish society, and to a large extent the modern one, is a patriarchal society. The father is the head of the family. The age and life experience of older people are highly respected. Sons are valued more than daughters, as they pass on the honor of the family and family traditions to subsequent generations. But this does not mean that a woman is a second - class person. Even after the adoption of Islam, the Turks continued to live monogamously. Polygamy has never been widespread in Turkey. There are practically no proverbs in the Turkish language that are offensive to women or denigrate them. < ... > Many proverbs clearly show the respect shown to mothers in Turkish society" [].

An example of a significant statistical difference between the designations of paternal and maternal uncles is illustrative ('maternal uncle 'occurs 12 times in proverbs, amca / ammi' paternal uncle ' occurs 5 times). Within the framework of the strictly patriarchal Turkish system of kinship and the structure of family relations, the situation with a clear statistical predominance in the paremia of a maternal uncle compared to a paternal brother can be explained as a reflection of a more archaic system in which the account of kinship was dominated not by the paternal, but by the maternal line. The historical analysis of the Turkic kinship system and the system of kinship terms is the subject of special research. Note only that the statistical data of Turkish paremias indicate the possibility of reconstructing the bifurcative-confluent kinship system, in which the direct and collateral lines of kinship are not distinguished, but the opposition of the paternal and maternal lines is presented. In this case, the general designation for the father and the father's brothers is contrasted with the term denoting the mother's brother. In this regard, it can be noted that the absence of statistical differences for the designations of father's sister and mother's sister is quite consistent with the historical trend recorded in studies on kinship systems, when the loss of opposition on the paternal and maternal lines is recorded primarily for feminine terms, while maintaining the corresponding opposition in the masculine gender (for a detailed discussion of the historical typology of kinship systems, see: [Algebra..., 1995], especially [Kryukov, 1995]).

In general, according to the results of the analysis of the 150 most common concepts in Turkish proverbs, the semantic class "Person, family relations, social status" ranks first among the semantic classes identified by us both in terms of the variety of concepts presented and the number of words.

The semantic group "Human and animal anatomy and physiology"is widely represented in proverbs. Many words included in this class and related to the most frequent ones in our database, such as 'head' (162), el 'hand' (140), göz 'eye' (99), are components of phraseological turns and are used in proverbs as such. Also, these lexemes are characterized by functioning as various kinds of metaphors, which, apparently, should be attributed to universal, and not specific in ethno-cultural terms. In this case, the same mechanism applies as in the case of color designations (see below), i.e. those lexemes that have the most developed metaphorical function are most suitable for the genre of paroemias.

In the semantic class "Religion" in our statistical database, the word Allah is in the first place by a large margin (158), which is quite natural for a Muslim society. But in the proverbs considered, five more designations of God are recorded (- 17 uses, Mevla - 14, Halik' - 2, Mabut-1, Rab-1). According to statistics, the highest place among them is occupied by the token, from-

page 82
it belongs to the ancient Turkic lexical fund. In particular, it is recorded in ancient Turkic runic inscriptions (deeper etymological constructions at the general Altai level or even hypotheses about parallels with the Sumerian language go far beyond the scope of this article). It is significant that in the era of radical linguistic reforms under Ataturk, called the "language revolution", this word was used to displace the Arabic word Allah. The rest of the words in this list are Arabic loanwords used only in special religious contexts, which is reflected in their minimum statistical indexes, with the exception of the Mevla lexeme. It can be noted here that, in general, the statistical data obtained correlate well with the materials of the historical lexicology of the Turkish language.

The Turks throughout their history have paid great attention to the animal world. Thus, in ancient Turkic anthroponymy, the fauna is represented in a very diverse way [Comparative Historical Grammar..., 2001, p. 718]. N. Muallimoglu, noting that animals are the main object for metaphors in Turkish proverbs, says that he does not know any other language as rich in proverbs mentioning animals as Turkish []. Among the 150 most common concepts in proverbs, twenty belong to the semantic class "Animals, birds, insects" and denote specific types of animals, birds, and insects, while the broader general-type designations "bird" and "fish" occupy the sixth and fifteenth places in the number of uses, respectively, in this semantic class. At the same time, the hayvan token 'animal' was not even included in the list of the 150 most common concepts. Here it should be noted that in general, in traditional cultures, the designations of specific animal species noticeably prevail over broader general-type designations.

It is quite natural that in the proverbs of a nomadic people, the first place in the semantic class of animals is occupied by the word at 'horse',' horse ' (148). For native speakers of the Turkish language, the dog primarily expresses a whole set of negative characteristics, and it is in this capacity that the words köpek and it ' dog '(72 and 63, respectively) are found in the overwhelming number of cases when they are used in proverbs. The next most frequent words in this class are 'donkey'.'(98) and kurt 'wolf' (70), which is also easily explained - the donkey has been the main draught force for many centuries, while the wolf is a sacred animal for all Turks.

As for cattle breeding, large and small cattle represent a typical set of Turkic cattle breeders throughout history. Although the ancestors of the Turks also bred camels, camel breeding among most Turks, except for Turkmens, some Kazakhs, Kirghizs and small groups of other peoples, has come to naught [see: Comparative Historical Grammar..., 2001, p. 424]. The frequent occurrence of the word deve 'camel' (60) in Turkish proverbs can be explained, on the one hand, by the presence of a common Turkic paremia fund, on the other hand, by the importance of the camel for cargo transportation - almost all proverbs where the word deve is used mention the road, caravan, etc. The proverbs reflect the rich and fractional terminological system of dividing animals by age, breed, color, physiological and anatomical features that exists in the Turkish language, as in any language of the pastoral people.

In Turkish paremias, numerals are very widely used. According to the researchers, " ancient (written) and modern Turkic languages preserve certain archaic traditions, in which some numbers carry a special symbolism. These include the numbers of the first ten - 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, and also 12 and 40" [Comparative historical grammar..., 2001, p. 580]. These numbers are widely used in proverbs, with the numbers 1, 2, 40, 9 and 1000 being among the 150 most common concepts in Turkish proverbs. Turkish linguist M. Yardimci,

page 83
Considering the use of numbers in traditional Turkic culture, he described their symbolic meanings as follows: "The number" one "in Islam expresses Allah, Allah is one and one. <...> The number" three " is important in shamanism, according to which the world consists of three entities. Also, the number " three "is widely used in Turkic mythology - three deities, the origin of the Turks from three nomadic tribes, etc. < ... > The number" five " symbolizes five prayers a day in Islam, the presence of five fingers on the hand. The word "Allah" in Arabic graphics is mostly written in the shape of a hand with five fingers...> The numbers "seven", "nine", "twelve" and "forty" have a special meaning for the Turks due to the importance of these numbers both in Islam and in the folk Turkic culture" [].

The numeral " two "(51) is found in proverbs as opposed to the numeral " one "(120). As for the large number of uses of the numeral bin 'thousand' (31) and its oppositions to the numeral bir ' one ' in proverbs, according to N. Muallimoglu, this can be explained by "alliteration and euphony of the Turkish words bin and bir, and not attribute this fact to the Eastern love of exaggeration, as some people think"[].

The next most frequently used word in Turkish proverbs is the concept of "word", expressed by the lexemes söz and kelam 'word', 'speech' (107 and 6, respectively). Among the words with the highest index, according to the lexical and statistical analysis of Turkish proverbs, it is necessary to specifically mention those that can be considered universal, i.e. not related to a specific natural environment and socio-cultural paradigms. In Turkish proverbs, they are represented by such lexemes as söz, kelam 'word', 'speech', 'deed', ' work '(109), yer 'place', ' land '(89), yol 'road' (76) and a number of others.

An illustrative example of how accurately the data of statistical analysis of the vocabulary of paremias reflect the corresponding traditional picture of the world is the word su 'water', which is one of the most frequent words in our statistical database (104 uses). In Turkish proverbs, it is a symbol of absolute value, deserving of the best treatment, which is quite natural for a natural environment with a predominance of dry hot climate and a constant shortage of water (see, for example, the proverb ölümü sudan olur 'Cheap donkey dies from water' (i.e. from something good that you can not die)). For comparison, it can be noted that in the Russian folklore tradition, water is a symbol of danger, threat, and the habitat of supernatural forces hostile to man, which also corresponds to the natural habitat of the creators and bearers of this tradition.

Another semantic class in the corpus of Turkish paremias, which is of undoubted interest in terms of studying the traditional picture of the world and the cultural and historical features of the society of the bearers of the corresponding traditions, is color designations. Within the lexical database we are considering, this semantic class occupies a rather modest place. Only two color terms - kara 'black' (49) and ak 'white' (19) - are characterized by a high frequency of use in the corpus of Turkish proverbs. The reason for the statistical exclusivity of these two color terms is their use in metaphorical meanings, namely, to indicate a positive and negative emotional assessment, respectively. At the same time, synonymous color terms that do not have this metaphorical function have extremely low statistical indices or do not occur at all in the proverb corpus under consideration. A similar phenomenon, i.e. a significant role in the overall functional load of color values of such evaluation parameters as good - bad, useful - harmful, beautiful - ugly, etc., is generally characteristic of the world's languages and can be considered as a special semantic universal.

page 84
Statistical results were quite expected for semantic classes that reflect the traditional economy, economic structure, lifestyle and culture of the carriers of the considered paremiological tradition. Special mention should be made of the exceptional richness and diversity of the semantic class "food, beverages". This issue requires further study, in particular, the analysis of food codes in Turks. The presence of a large number of uses of metals and products made from them in proverbs can most likely be explained by the fact that the culture of the Turkic peoples since ancient times "is characterized by active knowledge and use of skills in metallurgy and mining" [Comparative Historical Grammar..., 2001, p.401].

In conclusion, it should be noted that the significance of the statistical analysis of the lexical composition of Turkish proverbs will significantly increase with the appearance of similar works based on the material of other peoples ' paremias, which will allow for comparative studies of the linguistic picture of the world in its folklore representation.

list of literature

Kinship algebra. Collection of articles. Issue 1. St. Petersburg, 1995.

Karaulov Yu. N. Russkiy yazyk i yazykovaya lichnost ' [Russian language and Language personality], Moscow, 1987.

Kryukov M. V. [Synchronous-diachronic method and the concept of transformational multilinearity of kinship systems]. Issue 1. St. Petersburg, 1995.

Levin Yu. I. Proverbial space / / Paremiological research. Collection of articles, Moscow, 1984.

Sedakova I. A. Epitet v strukture i semantike bolgarskikh proverovits i zagadok (Opyt sravnitel'nogo analiza) [Epithet in the structure and semantics of Bulgarian proverbs and Riddles (Experience of comparative Analysis)]. Riddle as text. Collection of Articles, Part 2, Moscow, 1999.

Comparative historical grammar of the Turkic languages. Leksika, Moscow, 2001.

Chaykovskaya A. Ponyatie "CHELOVEK" v leksike turetskogo yazyka [The concept of " MAN " in the vocabulary of the Turkish language]. Collection of articles. Issue IV. Moscow, 1999.

N. The Turkish delights, a treasury of proverbs and folk saying // http://www.ottomansouvenir.com/Turkish_Proverbs/Turkish_Proverbs_3.htm)

M. Geleneksel kültürümüzde ve dilinde // (http://www.turkoloji.cu.edu.tr/HALKBILIM/18.php)

M. A Dictionary of Turkish Proverbs. Ankara, 1993.

Permanent link to this publication: