DOI: https://doi.org/10.36719/XXXX-XXXX/3/5-13 

Verb Forms and Polysemy in Vasily Vasilyevich Radlov’s “Experience of the Dictionary of Turkic Dialects”

Konul Abdullayeva

Abstract. Among the research works on the study, collection, and grouping of Turkic languages in the 19th century, it is worth mentioning the works of V. V. Radlov. The scientist, who devoted his entire life to this work, is the author of dozens of books that illuminate the history, lexicon, and grammar of Turkic languages. In his dictionary “Experience of the Dictionary of Turkic Dialects,” he noted not only one way of expressing words, but also other variants of many words. This means that the scientist was not satisfied with collecting only words belonging to dialects, but also collected, deeply studied, and systematized words used in the dialects included in these dialects. Polysemy arises in language for certain reasons. Words are initially monosemantic, and after a certain historical period they develop towards polysemy. Here, metaphor predominates. We also come across a number of polysemantic words in the dictionary “Experience of the Dictionary of Turkic Dialects,” which is considered one of the valuable treasures of the 19th century. For example, Radlov, who translated eight meanings of the verb “to open,” also showed the richness of our language. In this article, we conducted research on the verbs listed in V. V. Radlov’s mentioned dictionary, grouped them according to their forms, and also showed examples of verbs that have gained multiple meanings through metaphor.