Figurative-aesthetic Understanding of the Phenomenon of the Native Language: Poem by M. Rylsky “Mova” and its Translations into Russian

Abstract

The problem of comprehending the essence of the concept of “native language”, despite the rather long interest in it of both linguists and representatives of a number of other sciences (first of all — “joint” with linguistics), remains very urgent at the present time. This is due, on the one part, to the complexity and multidimensionality of the phenomenon being interpreted; on the other part, the originality of accents placed on various aspects of this definition when interpreting it within the framework of various scientific fields (psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, language teaching methodology, etc.). In this situation, it seems appropriate to pay attention to the figurative and aesthetic understanding of the concept of “native language” when it is included in the verbal and artistic structures, where, in addition to constructive, key for the semantic structure, components, by definition, the components that are potentially present in the semantic scope of the concept are also actualized. In this article, the material for consideration in the stated manner was a poem by the classic of Ukrainian literature M.F. Rylsky’s “Mova” (“Language”), which comprehends the phenomenon of the native language, and two of its translations into Russian. The analysis shows that the figurative-aesthetic interpretation of the category of scientific property allows a more detailed and deep description of not only its semantic, but also its conceptual properties. When translating this poem into another, in this case, a closely related language, the translator’s priority task is to preserve the conceptual and aesthetic significance inherent in the image of the language in the original work.