OBJECTIVIZATION OF RIVER IN THE LINGUISTIC WORLD-VIEW OF THE SELKUP ETHNOS
The article deals with the research of a secular and sacral role of river in the linguistic world-view of the Selkup ethnos. The article studies the names of river in the Selkup language dialects and semantic types of hydronyms; analyses space orientation connected with river; describes a mythopoetic image of river in the language and folk tradition of the Selkups. The Selkup language dialects have a large number of water bodies’ names, which contain information on their form, size and location. The structure of hydronyms has the information on form, landscape and size of water bodies, availability of fish, birds and wild animals and connection with religious beliefs. The Selkup language contains adverbs characterizing space orientation regarding the course of a river: up and down (the stream), and adverbs characterizing the direction of movement in water to the coast and direction of movement on the coast to the water. River is the most important spatial reference for the Selkups and one of the focal points in the space. In the Selkup mythology river plays a role of an “axis” of the universe and world-view, which penetrates the upper, middle and lower worlds. Ethnographic and linguistic data prove that the Selkups perceived river as a living being. The role of river is manifest most representatively in the lexical unit qwej ‘river’, which is used to denote any river and completely coincides in form with the word ‘breath’. River is a source of life, spatial reference, universe model and a live being for the Selkup people.
Keywords: Selkup language, universe model, linguistic world-view, river, hydronym, space orientation
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Issue: 2, 2014
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
Pages: 29 — 33
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