Search

Moral and Ethical Characteristics of a Person in the Dialect of Tatars from the Tobolsk Province // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2026. Issue 1 (51). P. 59-66

This paper, based on lexicographic sources in the Tatar dialect of Tobolsk Province, examines the semantics of lexemes denoting a person's moral and ethical qualities (253 units). The study focuses on lexical and semantic oppositions such as ‘good – bad,’ ‘righteous – sinful,’ ‘kind – evil,’ ‘friend – enemy,’ ‘faithful – unfaithful,’ ‘generous – greedy,’ ‘polite – rude,’ ‘merciful – cruel,’ ‘patient – angry,’ ‘chaste – promiscuous,’ ‘modest – vain,’ ‘honest – deceitful,’ ‘sincere – hypocritical,’ ‘simple – cunning,’ ‘decent – criminal,’ "shameful – brazen,’ ‘hardworking – lazy,’ ‘joyful – envious,’ ‘magnanimous – vengeful,’ ‘sober – drunkard,’ and ‘humble – arrogant.’ The novelty of the study lies in the use of little-studied lexicographic sources from the 19th to early 20th centuries, the identification of synonymous and antonymous relationships among the analyzed units, and the determination of the moral and ethical values of the Tatars in the Tobolsk Province. The vocabulary examined reveals value relationships among people regarding labor and property. It has been established that there is a predominance of pejorative units characterizing a person in relation to vices such as promiscuity, anger, lying, hypocrisy, greed, and shamelessness, and meliorative units in relation to kindness, mercy, righteousness, and magnanimity. The authors identified dialectal words (basyk, kapshagay, mast, sata, syaktya, tsagutse), phonetic variants, borrowings from Arabic and Persian, and obsolete lexemes with Turkic roots. Dictionaries record not only primary nominations but also secondary ones (ilan ‘snake; flatterer’, myatskai ‘evil female spirit that feeds on blood; gluttony’, ubyr ‘demon; gluttony’), as well as phraseological units (kan inkutse ‘bloodsucker’, ah kazlu ‘with hungry eyes’, ike yuzle ‘with a double heart’, etse kara ‘with a black gut’). The linguistic material studied can be used to compile dictionaries of dialectisms, obsolete words, and borrowings, thereby determining the practical value of this article.

Keywords: dialect, Tatars, Tobolsk Province, person, morality, ethics, pejorative, meliorative, synonym, antonym, dialectism