Sensory priorities in the Arctic environment: ecosemiotic analysis of perceptual vocabulary in the Yakut language

The article examines the perceptual lexicon of the Yakut language within an ecosemiotic framework. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to reveal how the sensory priorities of Arctic peoples, shaped by extreme natural conditions, are reflected in language and contribute to the preservation of linguistic heritage. The aim of the research is to reconstruct the hierarchy of sensory modalities encoded in the Yakut lexical system and interpret it as a reflection of historically formed adaptive strategies. The material includes explanatory and bilingual dictionaries of the Yakut language and illustrative examples from literary texts, comprising 327 lexical units. The methodology combines cognitive-semiotic modeling with component, distributional, and quantitative analysis. The results show a stable hierarchy of sensory priorities: hearing occupies the dominant position (31%) due to the semantic syncretism of the verb ihit ‘to hear – to understand – to obey’; olfaction ranks second (24%) and is marked by object-oriented and evaluative vocabulary; vision and taste hold intermediate positions (17% each), while touch has the lowest share (11%) and performs mainly auxiliary functions. The study also reveals an uneven distribution of subject-oriented and object-oriented lexicon, especially in the olfactory domain, where object-oriented encoding prevails (55%). The conclusion is that the dominance of hearing and smell reflects the ecological and social adaptation of the Yakut ethnos to Arctic conditions.

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