Birsel Karakoç, Uldanay Jumabay

Turkic Languages, Volume 27 (2023), Issue 2, Page 162 - 185

The paper investigates the semantics of postverbial constructions marking transformativity in Kazakh. Postverbial constructions consist of a lexical verb with the converb marker in {-(Ị)p} or {-A//-y} and an auxiliary verb. These constructions function as actionality markers, recategorizing the inherent phase structures of their lexical verbs. The transformativizing constructions highlight the initial or the final phase of an action, such as otïr-ïp̣ bol- ‛to sit down’ ← otïr- ‛to sit down and to sit’, žaz-ïp̣ bol- ‛to write down’ ← žaz- ‛to write’. Besides phase specification, they can convey various semantic values, such as that the action is performed consciously or unconsciously, easily or with effort and difficulty, expectedly or unexpectedly, intentionally or unintentionally, coercively or instinctively, slowly or swiftly, and the like. The transformativizers have not previously been studied from a comparative perspective, and thus we do not know much about the correlations between their semantic values. The overarching question concerns the ways in which the postverbial constructions differ from each other semantically. The analysis is developed in multiple stages, and suggests thirteen semantic ideas that are expressed by the transformativizers found in our data. Each semantic idea appears with two contrary semantic values, value [a] or value [b]. The results suggest among other things a strong correlation between the type of the converb suffix, {-(Ị)p} or {-A//-y}, and the semantic values, [a] or [b], of a given semantic idea.

Keywords: Kazakh, postverbial construction, actionality, transformativization

Ainur Bayekeyeva, Saule Tazhibayeva, Uldanay Jumabay, Irina Nevskaya

Turkic Languages, Volume 25 (2021), Issue 1, Page 26 - 40

The article deals with Kazakh male and female first names derived from appellatives denoting metals and minerals. The mining industry in the Turkic world originated in ancient times, and its terminology was widely used in medieval Eurasia by speakers of Old and Middle Turkic languages. The spread of the mining industry in Turkic-speaking areas went hand in hand with the use of mining terminology by the Turks, also for forming personal names. There are plenty of Turkic anthroponyms derived from metal and mineral names in both ancient and modern sources. Our research on Kazakh first names has shown that there are more than 160 masculine and feminine anthroponyms containing terms referring to metals and minerals in Kazakh lexicographical sources. These are mostly composite, formed according to a certain pattern: an appellative plus an additional component, often a title or a general term denoting a person. Generally, those components tend to be grammaticalized as evaluative markers (honorifics or markers of hypocorism). However, as structural components of first names they do not render evaluative semantics. It is interesting that Kazakh masculine personal names are mostly derived from names of metals and ores, i.e. natural materials that have not been made or processed by human beings, while feminine personal names are mostly derived from terms used for minerals and gemstones.

Aynur Abish, Uldanay Jumabay

Turkic Languages, Volume 23 (2019), Issue 1, Page 49 - 66

Kazakh as spoken in China, like other Turkic languages, distinguishes between two types of complement clauses. In Kazakh, one is based on the action nominal {-Ụ2w} and the other on other action nominals as, for instance, {-G4A2n}. The present paper deals with the complement-taking matrix predicates that select the complementizer {-Ụ2w}. These matrix predicates fall into four semantic types expressing: (i) modality; (ii) manner; (iii) evaluation; (iv) purpose.