Emotions and the archaic consciousness of man: a diachronic semantic reconstruction of the names of emotions in English

Abstract

This paper works with the diachronic depth of concepts in national worldview, and is a piece of panchronic research that respects the stages in evolution of human consciousness, as it looks at diachronic depth of emotion concepts in English worldview, in the case of diachronic semantic reconstruction of the nouns fear, sadness, happiness, and serenity that in Modern English manifest the FEAR, SADNESS, HAPPINESS, and SERENITY concepts. Etymons of the nouns were identified in Old English as fær, hæp, sæd, and in Old French as serenité. These etymons are words, and also are signs for certain phenomena on the map of archaic world represented in the mind; these signs were reconstructed via etymological analyses from the Proto-Indo-European archetypes *pēr-, *kap-, *sá-, and *ksero-. Next, the archaic images that came to motivate the words fær, hæp, sæd, and serenité at the time of creation were reconstructed and shown via etymological interpretations organized into matrices relative to sacred rituals of pagans in whose mind the world was represented with the help of images as symbols for certain phenomena of this world. Interpretations within each matrix unfold into a mythical story narrated with reference to symbolism of pagan rituals in the archaic worldview.