Abstract
The main goal main goal of our study is to give a description of a segment of the linguistic worldview, which reflects the division of objects of objective reality into animate and inanimate, which underpins the grammatical category of animacy-inanimacy of nouns in Russian. Methodology. The methodological basis of is study is comprised of the combination of structural-semantic, cultural-anthropological and comparative methods. The interpretation of linguistic phenomena is based upon the link between the grammatical form and its semantic content. The employment of cultural-anthropological approach allows us to reveal the reflection of fragments of the linguistic worldview in language forms, a reflection of collective ideas about the surrounding reality fixed in the language and obligatory for all speakers of this language. An analysis of everyday ideas about various objects of reality that are interpreted as living or inanimate, allows us to discover, at the epistemological level, several intermediate conceptual forms (interpreted as resembling the animate, as formerly animate, as a set of living organisms, etc.).This makes it possible to explain the existence of nouns with fluctuating animacy-inanimacy. Results. The performed analysis leads us to the conclusion that in the linguistic consciousness of speakers, the classification of objects as animate/inanimate is carried out not onlyon the basis of the biological properties of these objects, but also basedontheir interpretationbyspeakersas active or inactive. At the same time, ourinterpretationof some objects may cause difficulties because they combine the characteristics of both “animate” and “inanimate”.
Highlights
The category of animacy-inanimacyin the Russian language and, more broadly, in interpreting objects of reality as animate or inanimate is an object of research of various academic disciplines – linguistics, psychology, culture studies, etc
It is necessary to distinguish between scientific concepts, which are formed as a result of an objective scientific analysis of reality, and “everyday concepts”inherent in most native speakers, and reflecting fragments of the “naïve” linguistic worldview–“subjective ideas of a person about the world recorded by the facts of the language, different from the scientificworldview”[14]
Our analysis of the semantic groups of nouns enables us to make a conclusion about the grammatical category of animacy-inanimacy of nouns being associated with the specifics of people’s interpretation of the surrounding world
Summary
The category of animacy-inanimacyin the Russian language and, more broadly, in interpreting objects of reality as animate or inanimate is an object of research of various academic disciplines – linguistics, psychology, culture studies, etc. The declension forms of which coincide in accusative and genitive cases /Accusative=Genitive/, usually denote living beings. Inanimate nouns, which are characterized by the coincidence of the accusative and nominative forms /Accusative=Nominative/, nominate inanimate objects This pattern is regularly violated: for example, most nouns naming deceased persons, the names of game pieces, dolls, etc. These examples indicate that for this grammar category the leading characteristic is the subjective interpretationof the object by native speakers, as well as the outcomes of the earlier stages of interpretation (animism) recorded in grammar. As Louis Hjelmslev points out, “subjective classification ... rarely rests on the physical properties of an object, more often it is based on the role, utility function (imaginary or real) of the object” [12]
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