Humanities & Social Sciences 10 (2016 9) 2298-2304 ~ ~ ~ УДК 81-23 The Sakha and the Evenk: Fundamentals of Common Conceptual Space Evdokiya N. Afanasieva and Raissa P. Ivanova* Mirny Polytechnic Institute (branch) of Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University 5/1 Tikhonova Str., Mirny, Sakha Republic, 678170, Russia Received 09.09.2016, received in revised form 16.09.2016, accepted 05.10.2016 The article deals with the problem of linguistic contacts and their impact on worldview of the Evenk and Sakha. <...> Mythology, language and folklore of these peoples have common features. <...> The God is in heaven, people are in the middle world, devils are in the lower world. <...> In the Sakha epic heaven is the place of not only gods but also some evil spirits and ancestors. <...> The Evenk imagine heaven as paradise, no evil spirits live there. <...> The warriors of the middle world travel to the upper world to search for the brides. <...> Close contacts and neighbouring during long-time period and family ties between the Evenk and Sakha had led to the formation of the common conceptual space based on religious and cultural syncretism, intermixture of the mythological and epic worldview. <...> Introduction According to the Altaic theory, the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic peoples had common Altaic origin and spoke the same language during the Altaic epoch (Tenishev, 1996: 7-16). <...> Many linguists consider the common features of the Altaic languages to be the result of linguistic contacts. <...> The interaction between the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages was durable and intensive and took 1,5-2 thousand years (Scherbak, 2012: 132). <...> German scholar K. Schцnig wrote about the great role of the interaction between the languages © Siberian Federal University. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: Raissa1@yandex.ru, Lukow@mail.ru – 2298 – during the Proto- and Pre-Proto-Turkic-Mongolic periods (Schцnig 2005: 132). <...> Already in the 11th and 12th centuries the Turkic named the God kӧk tӓŋri (blue sky, Evdokiya N. Afanasieva, Raissa P. Ivanova. <...> The Mongolic tribes addressed Heaven as “Father” and Earth as “Mother” (Shojsorova, 2006: 11). <...> The mythological picture of the world manifests itself in the language: the Chinese word tjan and ancient Turkic kӧk tӓŋri have the meanings of Heaven and God at the same time. <...> Investigators <...>