Candidate of philological sciences, senior researcher of the philological researches department Udmurt institute of history, language and literature of Ural department of Russian Academy of Sciences Izhevsk, Russia [email protected]
Abstract: The article considers the Udmurt words and expressions conveying our emotions and feelings which reveal the inner world of a man. Obviously it is sacred. All «mental activity of a man, primarily a word and ritual texts which contain the important social system of values and meanings», is sacred. Often we use these words in our language, but we can’t feel and perceive them as metaphors. In the semantic and etymological analysis of such lexemes the researcher finds interesting images and ideas of our ancestors. In terms of economy these cognitive structures are used by the modern language. Cognitive metaphors create subtle semantically differentiated language of feelings and at the same time they reveal the semantic convergence. The imagery of the metaphor in this case is weakened, it is revealed in the crossing and contamination of images. Sometime we talk about a hidden metaphor. For example, the words denoting the concept of modesty in Udmurt language – zӥbyt, lachmyt, vostjem, etc. – have meanings of restriction of freedom and (inner) space, the ideas of which are expressed through the linguistic metaphor. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time in the Udmurt linguistics the cognitive metaphors that reveal the space of the inner world are considered; the relevance of the article lies in the fact that the work is done in line with the modern trends. For the disclosure of the primary semantics it is necessary to delve into their meaning, as well as in the cognitive mechanisms of signification. The analysis of the group of lexemes has allowed us to detect that, firstly, the lexemes are related with the restriction of the inner space of a man; secondly, all they have specific proto-situations which have been metaphorically interpreted and transferred into the inner world of a man, and they represented as the hidden metaphors. Moreover, it is necessary to consider the fact that from the position of word formation the lexemes have one-syllable root, and, probably, initially they were onomatopoeic words.
Key words: inner space, sacred, education, semantics, etymology, lexeme, metaphor of restriction, Udmurt language, the words zӥbyt, lachmyt, vostjem.