Existential Constructions in Prose Text by P.A. Oyunsky: A Model of the Beginning of Existence, Events, and Actions

The article is devoted to the existential constructions in the Yakut language using the prose works of P.A. Oyunsky, the founder of Yakut Soviet literature, the statesman and public figure, the scientist-linguist. The existential constructions in the Yakut language based on functional-semantic analysis are considered.The relevance of this article is substantiated by the application of modern approaches to the study of the Yakut language, which presuppose a holistic organization of universal semantic categories. The study is based on the proposition that the sentence as a basic syntactic unit, is reflected in a model that «combines the invariants of minimal structural schemes that ensure the completeness of the sentence and the generalized propositions associated with them» [10, pp. 64-76]. The structural diagram of the syntactic model of the beginning of existence in the Yakut language consists of a subject, an object and a predicate of the existential type, expressed by verbs of the initial phase of being, existence. The typical meaning of the model of the beginning of existence, event, action is «to begin (to start) one's existence, to appear (to appear), to become (to become) existing; to begin (to start) to carry out any actions, to be accomplished, to occur» [3, p. 367]. The method of continuous sampling in forming the material from lexicographic sources, the method of modeling, the method of glossing for the presentation of illustrative material are applied in the study. A new feature is the presentation of the model of the beginning of existence, event, action as a component of the functional-semantic field of being in the Yakut language based on the material of prose artistic texts by P.A. Oyunsky. Verbal means of expression denoting the beginning of existence, event, action in the aforementioned texts are determined. It has been revealed that one of the such means are the existential verbs teree ‛to give birth, to be born, to be born’, yeskee ‛to be born, to occur from something, to happen, to be from somewhere, to grow up somewhere’ and their derivative forms (participles and adverbial participles). Verbal means of expressing the beginning of an event or action in the prose texts by P.A. Oyunsky also include analytical constructions (adverbial participle ending in - an + auxiliary verb), formed with the help of the auxiliary verbs bar- (tonon bar- ʽto start to freezeʼ, buolan bar- ʽto start to beʼ), er- (suuyan er- ʽto start to washʼ). The models of the beginning of existence, event, and action, on which the existential constructions in the texts under consideration are based, have been established.

functional grammar, category, beingness, semantics, function, model, construction, means of expression, verb, Yakut language