СПОСОБЫ ВЫРАЖЕНИЯ СРАВНЕНИЯ В ФОЛЬКЛОРЕ БАРАБИНЦЕВ (по материалам В. В. Радлова и Л. В. Дмитриевой)

The language of the Baraba Tatars, an indigenous small Turkic-speaking ethnic group living in the Novosibirsk Region, is considered to be severely endangered. Its levels are extremely poorly understood. The purpose of this article is to study the ways of expressing comparativity based on the material of this idiom and such study is being conducted for the first time. To achieve this goal, folklore texts presented mainly by dastans, i. e. heroic tales, published in two works: V. V. Radlova “Samples of folk literature of Turkic tribes living in Southern Siberia and the Dzungarian steppe” and L. V. Dmitrieva “The language of the Baraba Tatars” were analyzed. An approach developed in the Sector of Languages of the Peoples of Siberia at the Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences was used to analyze the linguistic material. In the course of the study, the following ways of transmitting comparativity were identified: 1) the equivalence is expressed by affixes =taw / =täw; =lai / =läi and =layin / =läyin; predicates of similarity osha= ʻto be similarʼ, oqsha= ʻto be similarʼ; analytical index bolyp; parametric name sorlugu ʻthe same size asʼ; and other means – words shägällü ʻsimilarʼ, käbäk ʻsimilar, alikeʼ, tagynnajyn ʻthe same wayʼ; 2) differentiation of the compared objects is achieved both by lexical means – the words artyk ʻbetter, best ʼ, eng ʻthe mostʼ, otary ʻmore and more ʼ, kichӓ, kichyӓ ʻlessʼ, and with the help of the affix of comparison =rak / =rӓk. In most cases, the parameter and/or comparison standard is expressed implicitly and is deduced from the context. Examples from each group are represented by an uneven number of units. On the one hand, this may indicate a different frequency of use of certain ways of expressing comparison, on the other hand, genre features may have imposed restrictions on usage. In general, the considered comparisons have analogues in other Turkic languages, but also have a certain uniqueness, which can be accounted for by the transitional nature of the language of the Baraba Tatars – from the South Siberian Turkic languages to the languages of the Urals and the Volga region, as well as Central Asia. In the future, it is planned to consider the use of comparative concepts based on the material of the colloquial speech of the Barabians.