SEMANTICS OF VISUAL PERCEPTION VERBS IN THE ERZYA-MORDVIN AND FINNISH LANGUAGES

Abstract

The subject of this paper is visual perception verbs in the Erzya-Mordvin and Finnish languages from the point of view of their semantic characteristics in comparison. Depending on the leading role of the sensory system, which, along with the visual system, plays a major role in perception, one distinguishes between auditory, tactile, olfactory and gustatory perception. This verbal group has a sensuous level of interrelations. Being verbs of perception, they are aimed at objects that have physical characteristics, whereas many of them are focused on the perception of concepts. In this regard, the verbs of perception develop a polysemy that goes in different directions. The novelty of the research lies in the comparative study of the lexical level of the Erzya-Mordvin and Finnish languages, which will allow us to tackle some theoretic aspects of Finno-Ugric linguistics in the future. The problem associated with the study of the semantics of perception verbs, or perceptual activity, is of relevance. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to describe the structure of the semantic field of verbs of one aspect of perception, namely the visual one: to determine the nuclear and peripheral verbal units using the material of the languages under study; to describe the system of meanings of verbal lexemes in the Erzya and Finnish languages, to analyze the polysemy of the studied verbal group in each of the above languages; to reveal additional semantic connotations in verbal lexemes; of particular interest is also the comparative study of the specifics of expression of the same semantic meaning in the context of far-related languages, in this case, Erzya and Finnish.