Yakut phytonyms with somacomponents: motivational features of nominations

This paper considers the phytonyms with somatic components in the Yakut language. The purpose was to define the motivational features of the Yakut language nominations of the phytonyms with somatic components. The tasks were to identify phytonyms with somatic components in the Yakut language, consider how their nominations are formed, determine their motivational formation sign, and identify the nominal role of somatisms in the composition of phytonyms. Scientific novelty of the research is investigating how the nominations with somatic components are formed. Such a work has never been undertaken in Yakut linguistics. In the course of the study, 60 somatisms in 27 phytonyms reflecting different kinds of stable associative links in the language were collected and analyzed. Phytonyms were divided into several groups according to the soma components identified: emij ‘udder’, tiŋilekh ‘heel’, tyŋyrakh ‘claw’, atakh ‘paw’, tyl ‘tongue’, tumsu ‘neb’, muos ‘horn’, bas and tobo ‘head’, kuturuk ‘tail’, battakh ‘hair’, and others. The study has revealed that the most common are phytonyms with somatic words: kuturuk ‘tail’, tyl ‘tongue’, and tobo ‘head’. The analysis has found the most frequent somatisms to be two-component ones, with four-component ones being less common.