Affixal ways of expressing comparison in the idioms of the Siberian Tatars

The article aims at describing morphological (affixal) ways of expressing comparison in poorly investigated idioms of Barabian, Chat and Siberiantatar. Special questionnaires were designed to obtain the targeted sentences (tokens) with the meanings of similarity and differentiation of objects. 11 native speakers of the idioms performed the questionnaires. All the tokens, containing comparison were examined, and then only the sentences 132 with comparative affixes were chosen for further study. This paper uses the comparative approach designed by Siberian Philological School. To process the tokens, comparative method, modeling and component analyses were applied. The focus was made on two patterns with the meanings of: (i) equivalence expressed by the affix =taw / =tӓw (=dyj / =däj; =tajyn / =täjen) with synharmonic variants, (ii) differentiation expressed by the affix =raq / =rӓk. As a result, the equivalence affix was found to join the noun in Nominative case, and neither first nor second comparates require a specific case, whereas the differentiation affix was used with adjectives and adverbs, the first comparand being in Nominative case and the second comparand – in Ablative case. Such patterns are typical for many Turkic languages. In some instances, the use of differentiation pattern without Ablative could be explained by predominantly oral functioning of the SiberiaTatar idioms and, therefore, the lack of standardization. Forms with the affix =rak / =rӓk might alternate with zero affix. This phenomenon occurs in a number of Turkic languages and in some ObUgric languages as well.