Национальная ментальность в зеркале происхождения репрезентантов орнитологических концептов в русском языке

Abstract

This article presents a conceptual analysis of individual components of the structure of ornithological concepts important for the Russian linguistic worldview. The concepts SWALLOW (lastochka), STORK (aist) and SWAN (lebed’) are studied from the perspective of considering the motivating signs that form the basis for naming the representatives of these concepts as fragments of Russian national worldview and mentality. A concept originates upon the appearance of the primary sign – the inner, initial form of a word that objectifies a concept in a language. An overview of modern scholarly literature has shown that the abovementioned ornithological concepts have not been previously investigated in terms of the origin of their names in the Russian language. This constitutes the novelty of the article. The analysis identified 4 motivating signs of the concept SWALLOW (‘flying/to fly/to flutter’, ‘love/caress’, ‘fast’, ‘to jump’), 2 signs of the concept STORK (‘chernoguz stork’, ‘grey heron’) and 5 signs of the concept SWAN (‘white’, ‘white spot’, ‘dove’, ‘the Elbe’, ‘light/whitish’). All of the signs point to the primary national ideas about the concepts under study in the linguistic consciousness of the Russian people. These signs reflect the attitude of humans toward the birds and the idea of their place in each other’s lives. The identified motivating signs already contain “future” conceptual and symbolic signs. Turning to the National Corpus of the Russian Language for examples, the paper demonstrates the relevance of these motivating signs. Having studied the original meanings of these ornithological concepts in Russian linguoculture, the author concludes that the swallow is most often associated with humans, while the swan personifies God, and the stork is identified with the heron.