Репрезентация гендера в лексической системе башкирского языка

Abstract

Introduction. The Bashkir language ― like other Turkic languages ― contains no category of grammatical gender explicitly associated with the gender of animate nouns. There are only lexical means of gender designation. Goals. In this regard, the article attempts to study features of the lexical means employed to represent sex (gender) in the Bashkir language. Materials and Methods. The insight into specifics of gender in the Bashkir language includes the use of certain research methods, such as the method of continuous sampling, the comparative one, and that of statistical analysis. Results. The linguistic analysis reveals that the meaning of sex (gender) in the Bashkir language is manifested by lexical-semantic (gender-marked lexemes, with qualifier words) and derivational means. Semantics of male and female gender in Bashkir discourse is to be traced in such lexical and semantic groups as terms of kinship, family relations, names of professions, anthroponyms. Basically, gender in the Bashkir language is represented by separate multi-root lexemes. However, there are also some kinship terms and anthroponyms denoting females which are derived from masculine names. The same phenomenon is observed in borrowed names of professions when a female specialty term derives from a masculine form with the aid of the affix -ә. In the original vocabulary, there is no gender differentiation according to professional affiliation. Here, to concretize a person’s gender qualifier words that contain gender semantics ― qatyn ‘woman’, ir ‘man’, apaj ‘sister, aunt’, qyδ ‘girl’, and others ― are used. The study emphasizes there are obvious gender asymmetries in the Bashkir language since resulting from the prevalence of words to express the concepts ‘man’ and ‘masculine’, and the lack of lexemes representing the concepts ‘woman’ and ‘feminine’. This attests to androcentricity of the Bashkir language.