Gender and Age Designations of Small Livestock in the Languages of Altai, Khakass, and Mongolia

The article analyzes the system of livestock vocabulary, i.e., the gender and age designations of small livestock, based on the material of the Altai language and its dialects in comparison with a similar system of other Siberian and Mongolian Turkic languages. All available dictionaries for these languages, as well as expedition materials collected by the author during an expedition to places of compact residence of native speakers of the Altai language in 2022–2023, served as material for the study. The analysis of the livestock as mentioned above terms for the gender and age designations of small livestock using the example of sheep shows that many terms are common in Turkic; there are differences at the morphophonological level; there is a semantic shift in the terms denoting the age of small livestock; borrowings from Mongolian languages, all this is explained by spatial proximity. The Turkic peoples of Siberia are considered to be classic nomadic cattle breeders who raise the most important types of livestock: Horses, cows, sheep, goats, and camels. The Turks of Siberia have always been in close contact with the Mongols, and some peoples, such as the Tuvans and the Altai, have been part of the Mongolian state for many years. The Tuvinians and the Tofalars have lived and continue to live in constant contact with Mongolian-speaking tribes, which has inevitably left traces in the livestock vocabulary of these peoples. Lexical dialectisms and linguistic peculiarities occur during the historical development of the individual peoples. Of the lexemes studied, five are not listed in the available dictionaries of the Altai language; these lexemes come from the active vocabulary of the native speakers..

vocabulary, animal husbandry vocabulary, Turkic languages, Altai language, Mongolian languages, thematic group, comparative analysis