Mongolian Material Culture Vocabulary for Traditional Animal Husbandry: Saddles and Their Elements

Abstract

Introduction. The article deals with modern Mongolian terms for elements of a riding saddle (эмээл) and pack ones, the latter to include янгирцаг (a cargo saddle for oxen and deer) and хом (a saddle for Bactrian camels to transport bales). Goals. The study attempts etymological analyses into the specified terms and concludes on how the lexical/semantic group in question may have formed. Materials and methods. The paper focuses on Mongolic and Turkic dictionaries, scholarly works on the ethnography of Mongols. The material was selected through the continuous sampling method for further etymological insights with the aid of etymological dictionaries and works on Mongolic and Turkic etymologies. Results. There are approximately 30 Mongolian terms for elements of a riding saddle and pack ones. One third of the former cluster with the colloquial Mongolian vocabulary and are used either in figurative or in direct — but specified — senses. The remaining two thirds are special terms, the overwhelming majority of which have parallels in the Turkic languages. So, it is often difficult enough to establish whether a word denoting an element of the saddle is a Mongolism in the Turkic languages — or a Turkism in the Mongolic ones. The only explicitly distinctive borrowing here is the Sinicism мааюуз ‘cushion on the saddle’. Conclusions. The bulk of the lexical/semantic group in question is compiled from ancient terms. These are units of either native Mongolian vocabulary or Turkisms. So, introductions of advanced structural elements would give rise to new terms — borrowed from either colloquial Mongolian or languages of neighboring Turks, and only one proves an evident borrowing from Chinese.