Numbers of the first ten in the Tuvan epic (in comparison with the epic works of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples of Siberia)

The purpose of this work is to study the functional and semantic features of the numbers of the first ten, which are used in the Tuvan epic “Boktug-Kirish, Bora-Shээлей” in comparison with the epic of the TurkicMongolian peoples of Siberia. To achieve this goal, the work aims to identify the numbers in the epic texts of the Altai, Khakas, Shor, and Buryat peoples and to establish the common and specific elements in the numerical symbolism, which is one of the components of the description of national worldviews. The study was conducted on the material of epic works from the academic series “Monuments of Folklore of the Peoples of Siberia and the Far East”. The following methods are used in the work: the method of continuous sampling of numerals from the texts under consideration; the method of structural and semantic analysis of examples, the quantitative method, and the method of distributional analysis of the examples under consideration. To date, numbers as linguistic components that carry certain information have not been sufficiently studied in Tuvan studies, which explains the relevance of this research. The work employs an interdisciplinary approach that reveals the ambiguity of linguistic elements, in this case, numbers as lexical units. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that in Tuvan studies, the study of numbers as a cognitive category and as a symbol involved in the people’s perception of the world, based on the material of the epic text, has not yet been the subject of independent research. The necessity of conducting this research is due to the fact that a comparative analysis will reveal the features of the functioning and symbolic nature of the epic numerals of each nation, which acts as a form of information transmission that determines the internal structure of the distinctive culture of the peoples under consideration.

As a result of the conducted research, it was revealed that the epic works use numbers of the first ten, which have the values of sacredness, mysticism, sanctity, infinity (happiness). The use of the method of continuous sampling of the material and its quantitative analysis showed that the largest number of numbers of the first ten is found in the Altai and Buryat texts. The main conclusions made during the study have a promising continuation in the study of the entire corpus of folklore texts of the Tuvan people in order to establish the features of the linguistic and folklore worldviews of the Tuvan people.

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