Semantic-structural types of obsolete vocabulary (based on the material of Khakas heroic tales)

The aim of the study is to identify and describe obsolete vocabulary based on the material of Khakas heroic tales. In the course of the material analysis, functional-semantic, etymological, structural-semantic, comparative-typological research methods were used, which contribute to a more detailed disclosure of the semantic content of lexemes. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of research on this topic with the involvement of folklore materials and the need to develop their lingual-folkloristic paradigm as an independent scientific direction. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that obsolete vocabulary in the language of Khakas heroic tales becomes the subject of a special study for the first time. The work identifies two types of this layer of vocabulary: a) historicisms, which include mainly names of objects and phenomena of bygone eras; b) archaisms – words displaced from modern use by more frequent synonyms in the language. Since language is a dynamic and changeable system, historicisms have the potential to return to modern language under the influence of epochal changes in the development of society. At the same time, their semantics may be somewhat transformed, losing the sign of archaism and negative connotations. The category of archaic words includes not only words – names, but also words of other parts of speech, including function words. Most of the obsolete vocabulary we have considered has parallels in other Turkic and Mongolian languages. In our study, the term ‟obsolete vocabulary” is used formally, since in the language of heroic tales this fragment of vocabulary is frequent and fully reflects the corresponding realities of the epic world. We call this layer of vocabulary ‟obsolete” only in relation to the modern language. The language of heroic tales, as a special mental form of modern language, has been functioning and living since ancient times and can change somewhat depending on extralinguistic factors. The so-called ‟obsolete” vocabulary, as a timeless phenomenon, becomes a keyword and has a conceptual status.

In the future, research in the lingual-folkloristic direction will have to solve such problems as revealing the structural content of obsolete vocabulary in synchrony and diachrony, the specifics of their pragmatics and functioning in the text, etymological interpretations, etc. The analysis of such words should be supported by abundant illustrations of texts confirming their differentiated properties.

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