Article

Name: Genesis, evolution and semantics of the color terms kük ‘blue’, zäŋgär ‘sky blue’, jäšel ‘green’ in the Bashkir language

Authors: R. T. Muratova

Ufa Federal Research Centre RAS, Ufa, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The paper aims at studying the genesis, evolution, and development of the color terms kük (blue), zäŋgär (sky blue), jäšel (green) in the Bashkir language. The semantics of the terms under study reveals the interesting shifts both in the dialects of the Bashkir language and Turkic languages in general. Bashkir language dictionaries and corpus data of Bashkir prose and folklore have served as sources of examples for identifying the meanings of words. In the literary Bashkir language, the lexeme kük is used to denote “blue,” zäŋgär – “sky blue,” jäšel – “green.” However, there are discrepancies in the meanings of these tokens in the dialects: kük can denote all three colors; zäŋgär – indicates in some dialects only “sky blue,” while in others – “blue”; jäšel means “green” in some dialects and “blue” in others. The lexemes of kük and jäšel go back to the Pre-Turkic words, the word zäŋgär – to Persian. The lexeme kük in the Bashkir language also has retained the pre-Turkic meaning of “grey, gray,” and at the same time, it has a connotative meaning “western” in this language, different from other Turkic languages. Most of the additional meanings of the word jäšel are connected with the fact that originally it was the name of the color of young fresh vegetation, greenery: fresh, young, covered with greenery, not ripe, unripe. Only the word zäŋgär is used to designate only a color – “sky blue” or “blue.”

Keywords: Bashkir language, Turkic languages, color terms, blue, sky blue, green

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