Kinship terms in Tatar and English: A comparative analysis (based on lexicographic sources)

Abstract

Based on a comparative analysis of kinship terms in the Tatar and English languages, the research aims to identify their general and specific semantic-structural characteristics. The degree of kinship and gender differences serve as important criteria in the naming of relatives; the seme “age” is also widely represented in the semantic structure of the terms, which is particularly pronounced primarily in Tatar terms. The scientific novelty of the paper lies in conducting a comparative study of kinship terms in the aspect of their complete and correct lexicographic representation in the languages with different structures, such as Tatar and English. As a result of studying kinship terms in the two languages, based on lexicographic data, the author has revealed similarities and differences in the naming of persons who are related, has shed light on the hyper-hyponymic relationships between such terms. The research findings have made it possible to make a more complete lexicographic description of the terms as well as to identify lexical and semantic lacunae and fill in such gaps in the author’s bilingual Tatar-English dictionary with unrecorded units or separate meanings. Consideration of the corpus of terms with the seme “a relative” and their derivatives from the standpoint of a productive model of term formation served as a basis for revealing their word-formation potential to a fuller extent.