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Orographic Appellatives of High Relief in Yakut Oronymy // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2023. Issue 1 (39). P. 29-42

The article analyzes the orographic appellatives of high relief on the material of Yakut oronymy in a comparative aspect with Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus languages. The author examines their semantics and distribution. In addition, their role in the formation of oronyms is determined. The research material comes mainly from bilingual, lexicographic, etymological, dialectological, and toponymic dictionaries and linguistic works containing information on orographic appellatives. The study also used material collected by the author during the field expeditions conducted in the central regions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) since 2020. The article aims to identify the orographic appellatives of the high relief in Yakut oronymy and to describe them comparatively historically. Nowadays, such a specific layer of the Yakut toponymic vocabulary as oronymy is considered endangered for a number of sociolinguistic and socioeconomic reasons and needs collection, systematization, study, and preservation in linguistic databases. The result of the descriptive method shows that the orographic appellatives occurring in Yakut oronymy reflect the physical and geographical features of the terrain in which they function. The statistical method has shown that high relief appellatives account for about 27% of all Yakut oronyms. The most active in forming oronyms are the appellatives haya ‘mountain, rock’ (20%), bulgunniakh ‘pingo’ (19%), taas ‘rock, mountain’ (7%), tumul ‘cape’ (7%). The word formation structure of most of the Yakut oronyms with appellatives of high relief is represented by two-word attributive constructions and is formed according to models such as “noun + noun” and “adjective + noun”. The comparative historical method has shown that the orographic appellatives of high relief in Yakut oronymy are represented by Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu-Tungusic, as well as common Altaic word stems. The etymological analysis of the appellatives denoting different forms of relief allows us to deepen and broaden the study of the genetic relationship of the Altai languages and the ways of their historical development. Some appellatives of high relief are in the stage of their formation, and others are well established and exist in many Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus languages.

Keywords: Yakut language, oronymy, oronyms, orographic appellatives, high relief

Names of Orographic Objects in Yakut Language: A Comparative-Historical Aspect // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2026. Issue 2 (52). P. 73-85

This paper examines the orographic vocabulary of the Yakut language that conveys the core meaning of “elevated landform, height.” The study provides a lexicographic description and analysis of the names of orographic objects in the Yakut language and its dialects from comparative and comparative-historical perspectives. The corpus comprises entries from Yakut lexicographic, dialectological, and toponymic dictionaries, supplemented by field data collected during expeditions to the central regions of Yakutia since 2021. The research uses continuous sampling, descriptive, comparative, and comparative-historical methods. For cross-linguistic comparison, cognates and borrowings were identified in Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic-Manchu languages. Lexicalsemantic and word-formation analyses, supported by etymological assessment, reveal the origin of each term. Etymological data from the works of prominent linguists and typologists were used as sources. The 56 lexemes identified were classified according to the semantic features motivating their nomination: 1) size; 2) shape; 3) soil characteristics; 4) presence or absence of vegetation; 5) location. Observations of the distribution area of orographic units showed that the vocabulary of general distribution accounts for about 61% of the total corpus, while 39% of lexemes have limited territorial distribution. The study identifies lexical units derived from somatic and everyday vocabulary, as well as formations resulting from the substantivization of adjectives. Overall, the lexical-semantic group of orographic vocabulary in the Yakut language comprises three main strata: inherited Turkic roots and borrowings from Mongolic and Tungusic-Manchu.

Keywords: Yakut (Sakha) language, Turkic languages, Mongolic languages, Tungusic-Manchu languages, lexicology, orographic vocabulary, landform nomenclature, elevation