Articles

Connotative Meaning of the Adjective “Qara” (“Black”) in the Azerbaijani Language

ABSTRACT

The article deals both the primary meaning of the adjective “qara” (“black”) used in the Azerbaijani language, which denotes color, and its connotative meanings. The purpose of this research is to identify the connotations expressed by the adjective “qara” (“black”) in the Azerbaijani language in various contexts, to study its relationship with historical, cultural, and social factors, and to reveal the connections between language and culture. The article applies descriptive and comparative methods, as well as semantic and contextual analysis methods. The results obtained show that although the adjective “qara” (“black”) has negative connotations because it is mainly associated with concepts such as “darkness”, “mourning”, “death”, “heaviness”, “misfortune”, “bad ending”, “regret”, “despair”, and “sin”, in some cases it can also express positive meanings such as “great”, “basic”, “main”, “big”, “strong”. The purpose noted that the adjective “qara” (“black”) has special meanings in metaphorical and phraseological expressions, the use of this lexeme in various texts was comparatively studied, and it was shown that it takes on different emotional and semantic shades depending on the context. The scientific novelty of the research is that in addition to the main meaning of the adjective “qara” (“black”) in the Azerbaijani language, which denotes color, its connotative meanings have also been systematically described and analyzed based on examples. The practical significance of the research is that the explanation of connotative meanings can be useful in translation work, lexical-semantic analysis, the study of cultural aspects of the language, and phraseology research.

KEYWORDS

Azerbaijani language, color, adjective, black, connotation, association