Монгол хэлний тайлбар тольд үгийн утгыг тайлбарлах онол-аргазүйн асуудалд

On theoretical and methodological issues concerning word explanations in the Mongolian explanatory dictionary

Abstract

This paper discusses the differences of the notion on five types of animals/livestock between Mongolians and the settled people using four-volume Russian thesaurus dictionaries complied by the Russian Institute, Academy of Sciences, USSR in 1981. In this dictionary, the words related to livestock have been explained as follows: ‘cattle’- four legged, domestic and farm animals; ‘horse’ - a large domestic animal that is used for transportation of people, goods; ‘cow’ - a large domestic dairy animal; ‘camel’ - one or two humped large animal with great stamina in deserts and Gobi; ‘sheep’ - not big, domestic ruminant animal giving milk, wool and meat; the female sheep/ram ‘goat’ - domestic ruminant animal giving milk, wool and meat; the female goat.
Obviously these words cannot be explained similarly in Mongolian dictionaries. While many generic words like person, clothes, food, drinks, table, chair, flower, tree, land, sky, river, lake, water, air, bird etc., can be explained in same way throughout every language due to identical meanings. More detailed explanations will be given in the next article ‘Explanation of names of natural phenomena related with water’.