Etymology and semantics of Sakha color terms with phonestheme (a)al- and the contrast of light vs. darkness in the Sakha culture

Semantics of light is often observed by researchers merely within the framework of the color terms study. However, it reflects an interesting archaic, fundamental and universal principle, typical of many nations around the world – the opposition of light and darkness. Phonestemes, the meanings of sounds, also do not receive enough attention from linguists, compared to words. Therefore, in this article, the authors make the first attempt to consider the sound combination (a)al- with the meaning ‘contrast of light and darkness’ as a part of light semantics and to determine the genesis of the fundamental opposition of light vs. darkness in the Sakha culture. We study more than 30 Sakha color terms that begin with the (a) al- phonesteme and contain the contrast of light and darkness in their meaning. These lexical units were collected by continuous sampling from lexicographic and dialectological dictionaries of the Sakha language. We used semantic, etymological, culturological types of analyzes, as well as comparative analysis of semes. The study showed that the semantics of (a)al- words is based on a bright concentration of light on a dark background, as the contrast of light and darkness, heat and cold, which is motivated by the archaic image of flame – fire flame aal uot ‘sacred fire’ and flame of the Sun alamai mangan kün ‘shining white sun’. The contrast of light areas surrounded by a dark zone formed the basis for the nomination of various objects of the surrounding world: words denoting animal colors (white spots, stripes, variegation, pie baldness), properties of light (shine, radiance, saturated brightness), geographical objects (open, i.e. bright areas in the forest), figurative meanings with positive connotations ‘gentle’, ‘soft’, ‘kind’, etc., as well as elements of sacred vocabulary. The prospects for the study of this topic are not limited to this work, there are many questions regarding the etymology of light lexemes in general, their semantics also require further in-depth lexical and cultural analysis, which may become the topic of subsequent scientific research. 

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