Abstract:
The paper raises the question of studying the written heritage of the indigenous Turkic-speaking population of Western Siberia - the Siberian Tatars. The material of the study is the metric book “on a note of the dead” written in Arabic graphics in the Old Tatar language. The chronological framework of the study is the period from the 1830s to the beginning of the 20th century. The lexico-semantic classification of the names of diseases distinguishes four main groups: records containing the name of any part of the body/organ; records containing the name of the reaction/condition of the body; records containing the name of any change (internal or external) in the body/neoplasm on the body; names of diseases referring to a religious worldview. From the point of view of the structure, it was revealed that the names of diseases consist of two to three components, with the main semantic load in the first word. It was established that in 73.6 % of cases, the first component has a Turkic basis, and in 26.3 %, it was borrowed. The authors conclude that most lexemes in the modern pronunciation (or form) are widely used both in the Tatar literary language and in the dialects of the Siberian Tatars. The semantic dialectisms were identified, and lexemes used only in mosque books and dating back to foreign roots - Arabic or Persian - were distinguished.