Lexemes кара ‘black', кк ‘blue', кызыл ‘red' as expressive resources in Tuvan

Purpose: Qualitative adjectives кара ‘black', көк ‘blue' и кызыл ‘red' in Tuvan language are used as intensifiers meaning ‘very, completely, absolutely' when used as the preposition to some lexemes. In the study of Turkic languages there is a special branch of homonymy of adjectives that can be seen in chromatic lexemes. There are some kinds of combinations with lexemes meaning ‘colour' that can interact either with adjectives or with adverbs taking more intensified meaning due to which it works as a means of intensifier. The unique phenomenon of these combinations is that the same word combination can have different syntax functions depending on context of the sentence. Results: We have found more than 20 combinations with кара ‘black' and with more than 10 with көк ‘blue', where chromatic lexemes take intensifier function, passing a logical way: AdjChrom → AdjInt → AdvInt. The token кызыл ‘red' is less free in its compatibility, which is characterized by only the first stage of formation of figurative meaning: AdjChrom → AdjInt. The lexeme көк ‘blue' as a means of expressiveness is more limited in its compatibility and is connected mainly with the nouns having qualitatively estimated semantics and the substantivized adjectives (бай ‘rich → rich man', мелегей ‘stupid→ stupid man'). In this function көк ‘blue' and кара ‘black' can mutually replace each other with the same meaning ‘very, completely, absolutely' (кара / көк кулугур ‘absolutely scoundrel'). Conclusion: Accordingly, we have identified two groups of phrase models in which the lexemes кара, көк and кызыл used in a figurative sense. The first group is based on the standard model Adj + N, in which instead of a noun subject semantics the noun qualitatively estimated semantics is used, so that there is a shift in the meaning of the adjective: keeping its part of speech belongings, it becomes expressive value of the gain characteristic. In the second group of models belonging part of speech of the reference words depends on the context and is defined either as an adjective or as an adverb. Therefore, the dependent word - chromatic lexeme takes on the characteristics of the adverb-intensifier, and in this role it performs the estimator function. Compared to other Turkic languages, where the same phenomenon has been studied, in Tuvan the words кара ‘black' and көк ‘blue' are combined with a notably larger number of words, where the meaning of intensification serves as a means of expressiveness. It draws our attention to polysemy of three chromatic lexemes, which are very rich in Turkic languages as well as in Tuvan. We distinguish 3 types of word combinations where the chromatic adjectives have the meaning of intensification. The first 2 types may be viewed as phraseological units (semi-idioms and weak idioms). The 3rd and the largest type is unlikely to be phraseological. However, we also hesitate to describe these units as free combinations. Therefore, such combinations have been analyzed in the following article.