Metaphorical expressives in Tuvan lexicography

Fixation and assignment of labels to specific semantic derivation cases, namely metaphorical expressives (expressive lexical units) in Tuvan dictionaries, are considered and compared with their Russian equivalents. The Russian language influence on the semantic structure of the Tuvan lexemes is observed. Metaphorical expressives are lexemes formed by metaphorical derivation resulting in new (figurative) meanings without changing the form. The number of such units in the colloquial speech was found to increase under the Russian language influence in recent decades. New formation models non-typical for Tuvan but common in Russian have appeared. Also, the calques of Russian expressives based on models absent in Tuvan were found: bash aaryy (lit.: head pain) → “person or problem causing emotional pain or frustration to the speaker” from Russian golovnaya bol’ with the same meaning. The analysis showed Tuvan dictionaries not to reflect this phenomenon sufficiently, i.e., word figurative meanings, namely metaphorical expressives, are not represented there broadly enough. It may be because the labels marking certain words’ usage areas, particularly the label razg. (colloquial speech) is used rather liberally since the stylistic differentiation process is still ongoing in standard Tuvan. While actively used in oral colloquial speech, most expressive meanings of polysemantic words revealed in the study are not found in Tuvan dictionaries. In Russian, there are special colloquial dictionaries, as well as regional dictionaries with stylistic labels. There are no such dictionaries in Tuvan, mostly due to its vague stylistic differentiation. However, the Tuvan language is still evolving, with dictionaries updated accordingly.

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