A lexicographical description of Tuvan proverbs: Principles, structure and an ethnolinguoculturological commentary as compared to European paremies [Лексикографическое описание тувинских пословиц: принципы, структура, этнолингвокультурологический комментарий (на европейском паремиологическом фоне)]

Due to the absence of a typological description of Tuvan proverbs, the Tuvan proverb corpus seems to appear in an artificial isolation. On the contrary, it must be seen for what it is - an organic part of the Eurasian paremiological continuum. This part has both proverbs it shares with other languages and unique ones which mark the ethnocultural distinctiveness of the Tuvan people. It is thus of utter importance (and ultimate difficulty) that a lexicographical description of Tuvan proverbs must be built with paremiology of European language as its background. The aim of this study is to lay a methodological foundation for a description of Tuvan proverb corpus compared against European proverbs - a foundation which should cover its principles, structure and ethnolinguocultural commentary. Looking for factual material, we turn to editions of collections of Tuvan proverbs and sayings, to dictionaries, including the most authoritative paremiological dictionaries of modern European languages, such as the ones edited by E. Strauss, G. Paczolay, K. Grigas, V. M. Mokienko, or M. Yu. Kotova. The description, as well as its principles, is based on the theory of structural semantic modeling, which, in its turn, suggests that each unit of the corpus of Tuvan proverbs should be subjected to a differentianting use of the generality/specificity criterion. Compared against European counterparts, each Tuvan proverb can be seen as fully vs. partly analogous and absolutely vs. correlatively unique (in accordance with the structural semiotic model), the partly analogous further subdivided into ethnolinguistically vs. ethnoculturally assimilated, and the correlatively unique into ethnolinguistically vs. ethnoculturally marked (by key ideas and/or proverbial imagery). © 2021 New Reaearch of Tuva. All rights reserved.