Ethnocultural Сomponent in the Semantics of the Relief Elements Names (as based on the Ukrainian and English Paroemias).

Abstract

The thesis focuses on the research of the ethnocultural component in the semantic structure of Ukrainian and English paroemias with the names of relief elements in their structure as well as common and different culturally determined meanings of these language items.

Any language is an expression of culture and mentality of the people, a powerful source of the spiritual development of the nation. It forms a basis for modeling the national linguistic picture of the world. The specificity of reflecting the national culture identity reveals the peculiarities of the national outlook.

Proverbs, sayings and riddles form the corpus of the research. As samples of folk art paroemias are the most expressive linguistic means which reflect the national outlook and culture. The lexemes denoting elements of relief verbalize the concept SPACE that makes up one of the forms of spatial construction of the world in the human mind, through which people perceive, comprehend and create the world.

Ethno-cultural meanings of paroemias with the relief elements names in their structure correlate with the revealed verbalized cognitive features of concepts for designation of these natural objects. The ethno-cultural semantics of paroemias with the researched components is revealed both through the direct and allegorical meaning of the language items under analysis.

The landscape of the territory inhabited by an ethnic community has a significant impact on the formation of its worldview, national character, social organization, traditions and customs. The existence of the common semantic components of the key concepts defined in Ukrainian and English paroemias – ГОРА / MOUNTAIN and ЛІС / WOOD – is due to the similarity of the geographic features of the territories inhabited by these peoples. Forests and mountains occupy a vast Ukrainian as well as British and American territory, which is reflected in the frequent verbalization of these spatial concepts in proverbs, sayings and riddles of the languages under contrastive analysis.

Another evidence to prove the influence of the natural environment on the common consciousness is the significance of the concept ПОЛЕ for Ukrainians and SEA for English speakers. The fact that the larger part of Ukraine is covered with steppes, fields with fertile soil as well as the island location of Britain and the United States territories surrounded by seas and oceans influenced the formation of the national worldview, lifestyle, and habits. These extralinguistic facts are verified by the quantitative representation of paroemias which represent these concepts in national proverbial corpora, the number of variants and the complicated semantic structure of the items researched.

The most frequent common ethnocultural meanings of lexemes denoting elements of relief are as follows: 1) a habitat of fauna representatives: ліс, wood (animals, birds); поле (animals, birds), гора, mountain (animals); море, sea (birds, fish); річка, river (fish); болото (birds, amphibians); 2) a place for movement: поле, field; ліс, wood; гора, mountain; море, sea; ріка, river; 3) a cattle grazing place: поле; field; ліс; гора, mountain; 4) natural resource for human life: поле, field; ліс; wood; море, sea; river; 5) location of the evil force: ліс; гора; sea; болото; 6) a place for weather observations: поле, field; ліс; sea; 7) a dangerous place: поле; ліс, wood; море, sea; ріка, river; болото, swamp; 8) a large number, many: ліс, wood; гора, mountain; ріка; 9) a trouble, difficulties: поле; ліс; гора, mountain; море, sea; river; болото, swamp; 10) alien, distant: поле, field; ліс, wood; гора, mountain; море, sea; болото, swamp. Ethnospecific culturally determined meanings of natural objects nominations, objectivized in the paroemias of the contrasted languages, are also both direct and metaphorical and convey collective ideas about natural living conditions, peculiarities of house and farm management, history, customs, rituals.