Nouns with the meaning of consanguinity in Russian, Turkish and Chinese: structural and semantic characteristics

The article is devoted to the problem of identifying the national specifics of the composition and structural-semantic organization of kinship naming system in the languages with different grammatical structures: isolating (Chinese), agglutinative (Turkish) and inflectional (Russian). The task set by the authors is to determine in each language the structural features of nouns with the meaning of consanguinity and to identify both common and nationally specific semantic features underlying the nomination. The research methodology is based on ideographic approach to the component analysis of vocabulary: interlanguage comparisons were carried out within the framework of the denotative-ideographic group “Kinship and family relations” in which for every lexeme were found correspondences in the languages under consideration. The authors defined the lexemes forming Russian, Turkish and Chinese kinship naming systems and identified their main types. The results show that in Russian exact names prevail while there is a small number of descriptive names and no classification ones, while Chinese and Turkish contain all three of these types. The greatest number of lacunae in this denotative-ideographic group is represented in Turkish language where not every relationship of kinship has a specific term. It is established that the heterogeneity and complexity of the kinship names systems in the languages in question are explained by the number and partial discrepancy of semantic features underlying them. The signs of gender, degree of kinship and belonging to the maternal or paternal line are common to all the languages under consideration. In Turkish and Chinese the nationally specific criterion for nomination in this group is the age within one generation. The sign which is specific for Chinese terminology of kinship is the presence of the additional semantic feature “belonging to one's own/someone else's clan”. The authors draw conclusions that Chinese system of kinship names which is based on the largest number of semantic features is the most complex and extensive. The results obtained during the research can be used in particular to compile explanatory ideographic dictionaries of Chinese and Turkish.