Functional and semantic FEATURES of lexis describing human beingS in the epos "Idegey"
This article explores the lexis in the epos ‘Idegey’ that emerged in the 15 <sup>th</sup> -17 <sup>th</sup> centuries. By analyzing the thematic lexis of the source text we found out that its basis consists of Kipchak-Turkic words. Arabic and Persian equivalents of many key concepts, which were used later as the literary standard of the Turkic languages, are not found in the source text (or found rarely). At the same time, religious motifs, figurative phrases and Arabic-Persian words - all of these are the evidence of a serious impact of Islamic culture on Turkic-Tatar oral folk arts. The frequent use of the names of animals and birds in comparisons testifies to the fact that zoonyms were a source of creating metaphors as far back as in the Middle-Turkic Ages when the Turkic languages were forming and developing.