Comparative Semantics in Russian and Chinese Languages: Integrative Approach

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Abstract

The study deals with the proverbs of the conceptual field “Directness - Slyness” expressing comparison in Russian and Chinese. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the comparative analysis of these units from the structural-semantic, linguocognitive and linguocultural points of view in Russian and Chinese languages hasn’t been previously carried out yet. The novelty of the research lies in the integrative approach to the study of proverbs in two structurally different languages. The aim of the study was to compare Russian and Chinese proverbs of the conceptual field “Directness - Slyness” with the semantics of comparison to identify the conditionality of similarities and differences in the analyzed fragment of the proverbial space in two languages. Structural models of proverbs are studied, their classification in two languages is given. The authors analyzed the figurativeness of proverbs, expressed cognitemas, characteristic similes and oppositions. As a result of the comparative integrative analysis of proverbs selected from the section “Directness - Slyness” of the collection of V.I. Dal “Proverbs of the Russian people” and “The Big Dictionary of Russian Proverbs”, as well as the “Great Dictionary of Chinese Proverbs”, there have been drawn the conclusions about the similarities and differences between the proverbs of the two languages bot at the levels of syntactic models of paraemias, expressed cognitemas and figurativeness of proverbs. The similarities consist in the presence of matching types of structural models in two languages, the coincidence of the most cognitemas expressed in the proverbs of both languages, the dominance of animal images and the reflection of value preferences. In the proverbs of both languages, there is a contamination of the selected structural categories of proverbs and the inconsistency in some of the cognitemas, which is due to the situational nature of proverbial units. The differences are found in the composition of the categories of proverbial structural models, which is associated with the different linguistic structure of Russian and Chinese languages, in the predominance of comparative turns in Russian proverbial models, and the syntactic parallelism in Chinese ones, which is due to the figurative structure of Chinese language. The differences in figurativeness and private cognitemas results from the geo-sociocultural context of two linguocultures.

About the authors

Elena I. Zinovieva

St. Petersburg State University

Author for correspondence.
Email: e.i.zinovieva@spbu.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6253-9739
SPIN-code: 9059-2243

Dr.Sc. (Philology), Professor, Department of Russian as a Foreign Language and Methodology of its Teaching

11, University Embankment str., Petersburg, Russian Federation, 199034

Zhao Simin

St. Petersburg State University

Email: st091469@student.spbu.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1706-1021
SPIN-code: 6285-5928

PhD Student, Department of Russian as a Foreign Language and Methodology of its Teaching

11, University Embankment str., Petersburg, Russian Federation, 199034

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