The Vocabulary Related to Livestock in the Khakass Language (Comparative-Contrastive Aspect)

The thematic group of livestock vocabulary in the Turkic and Mongolian languages is an extensive layer of the lexical system of the language. It includes words naming domestic animals and characterizing their sex, age, breed, color, food, body parts, territories, husbandry, and grazing. In the classification system, these words are divided into different semantic subgroups. The richest group consists of the names of animals that express their gender and age characteristics. The relevance of studying this layer of vocabulary arises from the fact that in connection with the development of modern technologies, the once rich composition of livestock vocabulary is narrowing, as a result of which many words have passed into the realm of archaisms, especially the names of horse harnesses. In relation to the horse – the faithful companion of the nomad - the Turkic and Mongolian peoples have developed an extensive network of terms since ancient times. Using the Khakass language as an example, we have shown that compound words are active in this environment, which are represented by the combination of a common name with a determiner, e.g., улуғ мал (cattle), іргек сосха (hog or male pig), ине хой (sheep or Ewe); сібет адай (Pug or Dwarf dog). Certain types of domestic animals are also designated by combining basic terms with adjectives, participles, and substantival nouns. Data from bilingual dictionaries and etymological information on certain terms from the works of famous linguists – typologists – were used as linguistic material on the Mongolian and Turkish languages.

livestock vocabulary, Khakas, Turkic, Mongolian, languages, semantics, comparison