A Comparison of Equality in Kazakh and Turkic Languages of Siberia

Abstract

The paper is devoted to a category of comparison in Kazakh and Turkic languages of Siberia. Kazakh is one of the Turkic languages of the Kipchak subgroup according to Baskakov’s classification, or the Northwestem branch, Kipchak Turkic according to Lars Johanson’s classification. Comparison is a mental act by which two objects are assigned a position on a predicative scale. In a semantic aspect all the languages express the same meaning of comparison: a comparison of equality or a comparison of inequality, but the forms expressing comparison in the world languages are quite different. Researchers have expressed a common opinion that comparison is a complex structural system of multi-level means of expression: lexical, morphological, syntatic. In the Turkic languages, the most productive way of expressing comparative relations of equality is the affix - dAy that can be represented in the forms N- dAy and V-GAn-dAy. In the Kazakh language comparative marker –dAy can follow i) Nouns N- dAy and ii) Actional Nominal Verb form V-GAn- dAy. In our paper we will show the peculiarities of comparisons of equality in Kazakh, Altay Turkic, Khakass and Sakha Turkic.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s2p398