Grammatical means of theme marking in Tuvan language

The article offers an overview of constructions with such words and combinations as ‘regarding’, ‘as regards’, etc., in the Tuvan language. We know various theme-marking devices that the reader / listener may rely upon, namely positional, grammatical, lexical, and phonetic devices. The first and the last are thought to be universal. In Turkic languages, the main theme-marking devices are particles and word order. Normally the main information is presented via words or word combinations in the initial position. Aside from universal theme-marking devices, an important role in the communicative organization of a sentence is played by grammaticalized syntactic construction possessing the emphasizing function. The article studies the grammaticalized constructions in the Tuvan language which involve nouns or pronouns combined with speech verbs, existential verbs and position verbs. The structure scheme of 2-component combinations is the following: 1) PRON + V; 2) N + V; 3-component: 3) Tv=п + ка=ар=ым + V with a generalized meaning of ‘regarding’. Such combinations are similar to Russian syntactic constructions used as theme markers. The problem of syntactic interpretations of such constructions in the Russian language hasn’t yet been solved. The grammatical tradition views them as solid phraseological constructions with clearly defined lexical and grammatical composition and analyzes them along with complex sentences. Only V. A. Beloshapkova comments on the fact that these constructions contain theme-marking devices. She notes that in the Russian language, these constructions serve as «special emphasizing function words» and are built by the following model: ‘ что касается + Gen (Noun) + то + predicative construction of any type” [Beloshapkova 1977: 152]. In the Tuvan language, new monopredicative models are formed on the basis of bipredicative models due to special lexical content of the main part. These grammaticalized constructions, filling the initial position of a sentence, are used to attract the listener’s attention to the message, to accentuate the theme of the sentence. These structures are viewed as parenthetical theme-marking constructions ‘regarding [X], [it is…]’. Such meanings are realized via grammaticalized constructions, the first components of which are nouns or pronouns, and the second ones are auxiliary verbs. The wide variety of theme-marking devices serves one strategic goal, namely the communicative marking and formation of dialogic discourse. Topical-noun clauses serve as the most common contexts for such constructions. This is one of the types of grammaticalization of modal authorization category in the Tuvan language.