@article{2016,title={A STUDY ON THE EVALUATION AND DEFINITION OF LEXICAL GAPS},abstractNode={Language is an instrument that reflects the mentality, lifestyle, traditions, national identity and spiritual values and the world view of society. At the same time, language also incorporates the cultural background of a society. In order to know the culture of a society, one needs to learn the language of that society. When learning a foreign language, one is exposed to the cultural background of the target society. To be able to correctly use a foreign language being learnt, it is necessary to properly understand what the words in question mean as well as what connotations they have, besides their basic meanings, in the target society. In this sense, dictionaries serve as mirrors of the culture, and lifestyle of a nation/society. Many of the words that constitute the basic core vocabulary of the language being learnt can be understood through the use of dictionaries with no semantic or conceptual loss, but also there are some words that are not found in such dictionaries or cannot be translated correctly by bilingual dictionaries. This kind of situation is called lexical gaps (see Hartmann, 2002). Lexical gaps, originated from cultural differences and being the primary reason for miscommunication or difficulties in the translations, have been research subject in different areas such as foreign language learning/ teaching, comparative linguistics, literature and translation. In the study, bilingual Kyrgyz-Turkish dictionaries were used to discuss what lexical gaps are, and these gaps were divided into two, equivalent gaps and lexical absences. According to the classification that is based on the way a concept is dealt with in the target language, it is concluded that the equivalent gaps can be acceptable by the users whereas the lexical absences can cause a significant problems and flaws in tranlations. Thereby, it was asserted that, when exact equivalents of lexical gaps do not exist in the target language, as a minimum, they should be conveyed by acceptable equivalent or by borrowing/ transliteration and should be explained as cultural term/concept and then should be supported by explanations.},author={Baktygul KULAMSHAEVA},year={2016},journal={International Journal of Language Academy}}