Introduction. The article exa­mines Britain’s policy towards Mongolia in the era of Queen Victoria. Mongolia was studied in the British parliament as an object of colonial expansion in the con­­­­­­­text of the “Asian Issue”. These problems were not considered comprehensively in historiography in the context of justifying Mongolia’s expansion and its necessity for Victorian foreign policy. The invasion was not implemented by Britain, as Mongolia did not have access to the sea necessary for naval invasions and the creation of trade centers. All these problems force historians to identify the origins of the centuries-old contradictions between Britain and Mongolia, and the continuity of their foreign policy. The purpose of the study is to identify Mongolia’s place in Victorian foreign policy in the context of the “Asian Issue”. The objectives of the study include consideration of the peculiarities of Mongolia’s development in the context of the formation of British foreign policy, as well as the role of parliament and geographers in expansion plans. Materials and methods. The research is based on parliamentary documents, which are being put into scientific circulation for the first time, as well as documents of personal origin and the British press. Conclusions. Scientific and military intelligence research in Mongolia was coordinated by the parliament and Royal Geographical Society of Britain to strengthen the borders of British India, trade and opposition to Russia in Asia.

Introduction. This article focuses on the participation of Armenians in the battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 as part of the Red Army. The article aims to clarify the episodes of Armenian participation in these battles and to shed light on the activities of Yegishe Astsatryan in Mongolia during 1939 and subsequently during the Second World War. Materials and Methods. Russian and Armenian archives were studied, which allowed the reconstruction of the roles of individual military figures. The published memoirs of Georgy Zhukov, and especially those of Yegishe Astsatryan, are also of significant importance for this work. Official periodicals of the time, such as “Pravda” and “Soviet Armenia,” helped clarify certain issues. Despite the scarcity of primary sources related to many events, an attempt to reconstruct the general picture of Armenian participation in the battles of Khalkhin Gol using the historical-critical method, is made. Results and Conclusions. At least two dozen Armenians conscripted from various settlements of the USSR (predominantly from Soviet Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh) distinguished themselves in the battles of Khalkhin Gol, demonstrating examples of bravery. For this, they were awarded various medals and orders. Ye. Astsatryan played an important role in organizing rear services during the 1939 battles. Later, he worked as an advisor to the government of the Mongolian People’s Republic. He also played a crucial role in supplying troops during the 1945 Manchurian Operation.

Introduction. Medieval Armenian sources are essential for studying various aspects of Mongolian historical realities, inclu­ding administration, language, ethnography, religion, and key figures, while Mongolian historian Bayarsaykhan Dashdondog has extensively examined Armenian historical works on the Mongols, other types of sources, such as poetry, remain underexplored. In this context, the works of the eminent 13th-century Armenian poet Frik are analyzed for the first time in relation to Mongol history. Frik lived under the rule of the Ilkhanate, governed by the Mongol House of Hülegü, which controlled much of Armenia. His life and works were profoundly shaped by this political reali­ty. The purpose of this article aims to collect and analyze all Mongol-related references—figures, terms, and events—found in Frik’s poetry. By doing so, it reconstructs aspects of Mongol rule as reflected in medieval Armenian sources. Materials and methods. The study is based on Frik’s poetic heritage, which holds both artistic and historical significance. His references to the Mongols are examined in the context of historical events and interpre­ted ­using insights from subsequent scho­lars. Results. In his youth, Frik was engaged in masas—a trade supplying the Mongol mili­tary with weapons, equipment, and hor­ses. Although this business initially brought him considerable wealth, he later fell into poverty due to persecution by corrupt Mongol officials who oppressed those involved in the masasa trade (masaschi). Frik’s historical poem “About Arghun Khan and Bugha” (1289), along with his other works, serves as a valuable primary source for studying Mongol rule in Armenia, particularly under the House of Hülegü. His poetry offers unique perspectives on Mongol administration and its impact on Armenian society, complemen­ting our know­ledge of a number of Mongolian realities of the Middle Ages.

Introduction. In the Kalmyk Kha­nate and among the Oirats of the Dzhungarian Khanate, there were many charters issued by the Dalai Lamas and Panchen Lamas in different historical periods. These documents had not only important religious significance, but also represented socially significant acts. This study examines one of these letters, granted by the Fifth Panchen Lama Lobsang Yeshe (1663–1737). The purpose of the article is to introduce into scientific circulation and analyze in detail the previously unpublished original letter of the Fifth Panchen Lama, kept in Kalmykia in the family of Bogdakhn, as well as to compare it with the auto­biographical sources of Tibetan hierarchs and the testimonies of Russian orientalists of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. In addition, the article proposes a reconstruction of the context of the presentation of the diploma, presumably handed over to the representatives of the Kalmyk embassy of Ayuka Khan during their stay in Tibet in 1680–1682. The following sources served as materials: (1) the original of the charter, kept in Kalmykia; (2) archival photographs taken by A. M. Pozdneev; (3) autobiographies of the Dalai Lamas and Panchen Lamas and the biography of the Fifth Dalai Lama, con­taining information about the embassy of Ayuka Khan; (4) oral testimonies of modern kee­pers of relics. The study provides a complete translation and transliteration of the Tibetan and Oirat texts of the letter, describes its formal features, including the seals used and writing styles. The methodology includes comparative historical and textual analysis involving a semiotic ­approach to the study of seals used in Tibetan documents. Results. The article clarifies the role of the letters as an act of nominal citizenship and a form of institutional connection between the Kalmyk family and the Tibetan monastery of Tashi Lhunpo. Special attention is paid to the connections of the Kalmyk khurul Rashi Lhunbo with the Tibetan monastery of Tashi Lhunpo, as well as sacred relics still preserved in the Bogdakhn family.

Introduction. The article examines the little-studied leisure culture of the Western Buryats. The territory of their settlement, the Pre-Baikal region, is a cultural and historical region that has its own ethnic history and cultural heritage, which is an important source that vividly demonstrates the specifics of the development of the people and their creative potential. The purpose of the study is to consider leisure activities using the example of the local traditions of the ethnoterritorial group of Alar Buryats inhabiting the modern Alar district in the southern part of the left-bank Angara region, located within the boundaries of the Ust-Ordynsky Buryat district of the Irkutsk region. Materials. The work is based on various sources, including data from developments of the pre-revolutionary period and the Soviet era, modern historical and local history publications, as well as the author's expedition materials. In order to determine the genesis of leisure culture, a comparative analysis was carried out with the national games of neighboring Siberian peoples, including the Sayano-Altai Highlands. Results. Their main directions and nature have been established, previously unknown and little-known national games have been identified and presented, as well as an unfixed dialect terminology. The origins of the originality that is characteristic of the culture of the Buryats of the Pre-Baikal region are determined.

This work is devoted to clarifying the theoretical, methodological and terminological issues around the problem “people and (linguistic) landscapes” and to the practical study of linguistic landscape in one of the cities underinvestigated in this respect — Ulaan­baatar. The research is based on a mixed methodology: visual ethnography, questionnaires, interviews, and ethnographic observation. The material for the analysis includes 945 linguistic landscape signs, 100 questionnaires and 6 oral interviews, as well as informal conversations, media and social media materials. Results. From a theoretical and methodological point of view, the article examines the role of ethnography in linguistic landscape research, and comments on several terms used in ethnographically oriented sociolinguistic works: voices, language ideologies, language attitudes. The authors argue that the problem “people and (linguistic) landscapes” is broader than the problem “agency and (linguistic) landscapes”. It is also argued that addressing people directly, their language ideologies will help overcome one-sided researcher’s interpretation. The empirical analysis is based on the theoretical principles described above, also considering the broad geopolitical, economic and other contexts that influence language preferen­ces and visibility of languages in the public space of the Mongolian capital. The analysis showed a certain polarization of society in relation to the “dominance” of three most “active” foreign languages in the linguistic landscape of Ulaanbaatar — English, Korean and Chinese. Awareness of their necessity in the globalized world is combined with a fear of loss of national identity and culture. These common ideologemes have additional specific connotations in the case of each of the aforementioned languages. If English has a global value in the eyes of Ulaanbaatar residents, the value of Korean is due to the attractiveness of the economic “role model” of South Korea and the soft power of Korean pop culture. Attitudes towards Chinese vary the most on a scale from rejection to realization of its necessity. So, by examining the Ulaanbaatar’s case and methodological approaches, the paper argues that ethno­graphy enriches linguistic landscape studies by uncovering the lived experiences and contextual meanings behind linguistic signs.

The purpose of the study is a theoretical and analytical review of scientific works on Mongolian languages, which directly or indirectly consider reduplication. Special attention is paid in the context of the discussion whether to consider reduplicated forms as paired words in the study of the reduplication in Mongolian linguistics. During the review, the following tasks are being solved: to study the works of linguists researching the Mongolian languages devo­ted to reduplication and paired words, and to present their main points; when generalizing and systematizing knowledge about reduplication, to identify and describe some of the characteristic features of their consideration together with paired words. Materials. The research is based on the study of a corpus of linguistic works on vocabulary, word formation, paired words and reduplication in Mongolian languages written by domestic and foreign Mongolian scholars. In accordance with the purpose, the following research methods were being used: descriptive and comparative methods, methods of analysis, synthesis and generalization. The primary analysis of the material helped to structure and make the information clearer and more understandable for assimilation. The methods of the analysis and synthesis were being used to note the main theses of the publications under study, determine their general scientific direction and further unification within the framework of similar ideas using the generalization method. Results. The work summarizes information about Mongolian reduplication and presents the main motives for determining reduplications in the context of presenting related/similar relevant pheno­mena. The material of the article demonstrates contradictory views on the development of scientific knowledge about repetition (doubling, reduplication) in Mongolian languages: repetition refers to paired words or is a way of forming paired words, or is an independent linguistic phenomenon different from paired words. Formal and structural similarity of doubled forms and paired words contributed not only to their joint consideration, but also led to disputes and confusion in determining the status of a particular word. To differentiate them, researchers propose a functional-semantic approach and conclude that repetition is cha­racterized by the expression of grammatical meaning, and the peculiarity of paired words is the expression of the lexical meaning of the word. Reduplication as a repetition of the same word (or base) is one of the most common models for reflecting quantitative characteristics and enhancing meanings. The results of the review and analysis of scientific works are a necessary basis for a comprehensive description of the linguistic phenomenon under consideration in Mongolian languages.

Introduction. The article presents the results of studying the evolution and expansion of the meanings of the color names “black” and “white” in the Mongolian language from the point of view of semantics, language, culture. The purpose of this article is to explain the changes and extensions in the meaning of the color names “khar” “black” and “tsagaan” “white” from a linguistic, cultural and ethnographic point of view, to determine the semantic structure and compare the similarities and differences with the semantic structure of many languages (semantic map CLICS 3) using the electronic dictionary of the Mongolian language. From the material based on the database, a composite unit was selected, which is found in the names of the colors “black” and “white”, the extension of the meaning and the range of values were determined. Results. Branched variants of meanings are revealed, the meaning of phraseology is compared with the range of meanings in other languages, and the meaning of phraseology is explained from the point of view of metaphor theory. In the hypotheses section, the names of the colors “black” and “white” in the Mongolian language are used in the direction of the semantic series of good and evil when expanding and creating two large groups of opposite meanings. For the Mongols, the color “white” has a symbolic meaning, which is rooted in the fact that it is highly revered as the color of goodness, purity, and milk: ezhiyn tsagaan suu ‘white mother’s milk’, orgoo tsagaan ger ‘white palace yurt’, tsagaan hoimor ‘white place of honor in a yurt’, tsagaan gazar ‘white locality’, tsagaan ‘pure soul’, etc. The range of meanings of “black” generally corresponds to universal human thinking, which is based on the idea that black represents darkness and evil. But in Mongolian culture, its peculiarity is that the combinations are both common and show the meaning associated with Mongolian culture, social changes and historical vocabulary. Compared to the semantic map, which includes 3,156 languages, the range of meanings of good and evil is similar, but there are some stable units derived from the two color names in the Mongolian language, as well as their meaning and usage. This article is important for lexical semantics, cultural identification of word meanings, and ethnographic research, as it highlights the meaning and culturally specific use of Mongolian vocabulary units, as well as examines the value and cultural aspects of word meanings.

Introduction. The article is devoted to the national words used in the Russian-language mass media of the Republic of Kalmykia to convey the ethno-cultural component of the publicistic material. The aim of the article is to describe functioning of Kalmyk words in the Russian-language mass media of the Republic of Kalmykia. The material was contexts containing Kalmyk words, extracted by the method of continuous sampling from the publicistic texts posted on the website of RIA "Kalmykia" (riakalm. ru). The methods of lexico-semantic, component, comparative, and distributional analysis were applied in the work. Results. The analysis showed that in the Russian-language mass media of the Republic of Kalmykia, Kalmyk nouns are actively used, naming a place, event, person, organization, objects; common names denoting specific concepts and realities of the Kalmyk culture; adverbs (hamdan, uralan) and adjective (tsagan), which are included in composite nominations. Background and non-equivalent vocabulary from the Kalmyk language, as well as linguistic means with an emotionally colored connotation associated with Kalmyk culture, form the national cultural component of the publication. Conclusions. National units, most of which relate to nouns, do not violate the graphical, grammatical, and lexico-semantic unity of the Russian-language text. Kalmyk linguistic means perform informational, popularizing, stylistic, emotional and expressive functions in the texts of journalism. In the conditions of narrowing the sphere of application of the Kalmyk language, national words contribute to the formation of national identity and are markers of the cultural code.

Introduction. Business letters addressed by the Kalmyk Khan (before 1690, taisha) Ayuka (1642–1724), written in todobichig (“clear letter”), are polythematic multifunctional texts that implement, among other things, informative and influencing functions. Since the influencing function is realized primarily in motives of varying degrees of categoricality (request, order, etc.) and tactics accompanying imperative subgen­res, the purpose of this work is to identify imperative subgenres and other tactics of speech influence on the addressee in business letters to todo beachig, to analyze the ways and means of expressing the identified influencing techniques, as well as their comparison with simulta­neous translations of the letters into Russian. Materials and methods. The source of the material were the letters of Taishi (Khan) The Ayuka, sent to the representatives of the central and regional Russian authorities from 1665 to 1714, and their simultaneous translations into Russian, stored in the collections of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts and the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia. For this work, only those letters from the specified period have been selected that have preserved a synchronized translation into Russian. Results. One of the main influencing techniques is the tactics of substantiating the reasons for the incentive in the preceding or the subsequent context. The context preceding the imperative is noticeably narrowed; in a number of letters, the tactics of substantiating the request or order are absent. There is an increase in examples of using the subsequent context, indicating not only the need for the subject of the request, but also possible undesirable consequences in the event of non-fulfillment of the incentive. The influencing potential of incentive in business letters is enhanced by the use of self-names of imperative subgenres and performative verbs that specify the intention of the addresser. Synchronous Russian translation conveys the main intentions of the addresser, but the number of requests in the original and translation may not match, as may the means of expressing the incentive.

Introduction. Kalmyk language presents unique challenges for NLP due to its agglutinative rich morphology and ­limited available resources. The objective is to consider various neural network models of grammar analysis for the Kalmyk language. Materials and Methods. Several neural network models were selected for training: Lemma Accuracy, Levenshtein Lemma Distance, Morph Accuracy, Morph F1. Neural network model training methods, analysis, and comparison methods were used. The training dataset used consisted of an organizational part in depth of 2 495 sentences (including 35 049 tokens), a validation part in depth of 311 sentences (including 3 991 tokens), and a test part in depth of 313 sentences (including 3 627 tokens). Results. This paper proposes a high-performing morphological analyzer for Kalmyk language using neural network techniques. The analyzer is able to jointly predict a lemmata and morphological tags for each word in a sentence. Due to the scarcity of the data, morphological analyzers for low-resource languages often utilizes rule-based and statistical approa­ches. However, there are few studies based on deep learning approaches. Firstly, our model inputs word embedding based on characters and contextual embeddings ge­nerated by the pretrained cross lingual model XLM-RoBERTa. Secondly, the proposed model is based on a sequential architecture which inputs surface words and predicts minimum edit actions between surface words and lemmas instead of predicting characters in lemmas. Thirdly, our system does not require pretrained embeddings for the Kalmyk language  and additional morphological segmentation tools. We conducted several experiments to show that our model outperforms other models. 

Introduction. The article is devo­ted to the comparative analysis of plot motifs of the Altai and Oirat epic texts belonging to two epic traditions, each of which has both common features and characteristic features inherent in each of them. The purpose of the study is to update the tradition of comparative-contrastive study of the Turkic-Mongolian epic. The relevance of the study is dictated by the need to analyze the common and specific features of two different epic traditions that developed and existed for a long period in neighboring regions of Central Asia. Materials and me­thods. The material for the study was the epic “Maadai-Kara” from the repertoire of the Altai storyteller A.G. Kalkin (1973) and the epic “Bum-Erdeni” of the Oirat storyteller Parchen (1923). To identify common features of the Turkic-Mongolian epic tradition during the period of dominance of shamanic practices, the synchronic method of research was used. To highlight the features characteristic of each epic tradition, the diachronic method was used, which made it possible to trace the changes that occurred in a specific ethnocultural situation. Results. The main plot motifs (miraculous birth, hero’s initiation, overcoming obstacles, participation in marriage competitions, wedding feast, etc.), which formed the plot-content model of each of the two texts, are evidence of the common sources of their formation in archaic times. The characteristic features inherent in one or another epic tradition are already associated with different cultural and historical circumstances in which the further development of the epic tradition continued in later stages. In the structural and content model of the legends, it is necessary to note the obvious mythological component of the Altai epic, preserved in the motif of the hero’s departure to the other world and the final part of the legend, according to which the hero and his betrothed, having turned into stars, ascend to the heavens. The Oirat legend is characterized by the saturation of the content with Buddhist elements and a noticeable departure from mythological ideas.