Common Mongolian Lexis Denoting Tools of Trade in The Secret History of the Mongols (Parallels in the Khalkha-Mongolian, Buryat and Kalmyk Languages)

Introduction. The words denoting tools of trade are of particular interest since those are integral to the lexical layer which can be defined as ‘household vocabulary’, while, it would be no exaggeration to say, this lexical layer forms the basis of any language and reflects the processes occurring in the language, particularly the facts of contacts with other cultures that would have resulted in linguistic borrowings.
Goals. The article deals with the vocabulary denoting tools of trade in The Secret History of the Mongols. The study primarily aims to track the etymology of the words in question and discover their parallels in the modern Khalkha, Buryat and Kalmyk languages, since, in some cases, when the etymology is unclear, the fact of presence of phonetically and semantically identical lexical units in the mentioned major Mongolic languages to have acquired official state and republican status may be regarded as an additional evidence of the common Mongolic origin of the vocabulary under study.
Materials. The language of The Secret History of the Mongols is the oldest physically existing (written) and, thus, analyzable form of the literary Mongolian language.
Results. It has been chosen as a source of linguistic material because the conclusions regarding the forming processes of household vocabulary would have thus a solid basis. The paper describes the following lexical items: büleü/büleür ‘churning staff, a wooden stick with two cross-pieces or a disk on one end for beating kumiss’, aur ‘mortar; vessel in which substances are pounded or rubbed’, kituqay ‘knife’, süke ‘axe’, šiüci ‘chisel’, šibüge ‘awl’, tebene ‘a large needle used for sewing leather and other stiff material’, čalir ‘iron bar for demolishing rocks, breaking ice, etc.; crowbar, wrecking bar’, gölmi qubčiur ‘large fishing net’, gü:rege ‘bellows’, uqali ‘adze’, kirüe ‘saw’. It has been revealed that most of the words listed belong to the common Mongolic household vocabulary, and the words tebene ‘a large needle used for sewing leather and other stiff material’ and gü:rege ‘bellows’ are related to their common Turkic equivalents.

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