ON THE LEXICAL-SEMANTIC SPACE OF THE CONCEPT ‘STUŅDINĪKS’

Abstract

System of knowledge about the world taking shape in the human mind from birth is under constant development. Time and its measurement machines, varying over the centuries, embodies and reflects history, social life, ethnography and culture of certain nation. Folklore genres such as riddles and mutual chaffing songs have a vivid imagery, as well as strict regularities of forms, which appropriately also affects conservation of ancient aspects for understanding of certain perception.

Aim of the paper – to describe understanding of the concept ‘stuņdinīks’ (Latgalian for timepiece, clock) and its functionality in the Latgalian folklore. Lexically semantic field reveals the functional and axiological sectors for use of the concept ‘stuņdinīks’, as well as figurative pictures that were used for its representation and recognition in puzzles and mutual chaffing songs.

Meaning of the concept ‘stuņdinīks’ highlights three essential elements – the philosophical, which updates uniqueness of the time count and associative perception in Latgale, the axiological, showing material and spiritual values of ‘stuņdinīks’, and the lexical, where a single semantic field combines semantic variations of ‘stuņdinīks’. At a cognitive level ‘stuņdinīks’ is understood as a device for measuring time. While the emotional attitude to this reality is demonstrated by folklore, where conceptual content of ‘stuņdinīks’ appears in a variety of meaning transfers.

Lexically semantic field of the ‘stuņdinīks’ concept is composed of synonyms for ‘stuņdinīks’ (pulkstiņs, laikruods, zegars), its direct and figurative sense, word combinations with lexeme ‘stuņdinīks’ revealing functional and axiological sphere of the ‘stuņdinīks’ use, as well as figurative pictures that were used in folklore for representation and recognition of ‘stuņdinīks’. Semantic field in the context of analysis of the concept ‘stuņdinīks’ has to be perceived as an independent entity related to certain areas of human experience and in the psychological reality is shown and perceived in the folklore texts. ‘Stuņdinīks’ reflect the popularly-rooted perception of the object, by conferring to it real or imagined features and expressing ambiguously interpretable attitude towards it.

Lexically semantic elements contained within the field of ‘stuņdinīks’ concept represents significant concepts of Latgalians on the everyday realities. Their figurative interpretation reveals the emotional attitude existing in nation towards ‘stuņdinīks’ as a spiritual, as well as material value. Meaning transferences reflects the importance of ‘stuņdinīks’ singularity at the everyday and social level, while the cognitive level permits to discover features for setting it up in riddles and mutual chaffing songs.