Verbs of Thinking Activity in Erzya and Finnish Languages: Semantic Aspect

Abstract

Introduction. The study of the semantics of verbal units that convey relations of mental perception in the Erzya and Finnish languages is due to the need for a comparative study of this group of verbs to identify general and specific features inherent in these languages. Despite the numerous publications on this issue based on the material of various languages, there are practically no comparative works on this issue in Finno-Ugric studies and Mordovian linguistics, which explains the relevance and novelty of the analysis of verbal units containing the semantic component “mental perception”. The purpose of the study is to analyze and compare the most frequent verbs reflecting mental processes in distantly related languages. Materials and Methods. The research material was illustrative examples in the Erzya and Finnish languages, obtained as a result of a continuous and partial sample from texts of various genre and functional styles, including from print media, scientific and educational publications, various dialect and folklore texts included in the linguistic corpus of the Kielipankki Language Bank with the Korp server and MokshEr. In the course of the research, methods of semasiological, comparative, component, descriptive and contextual analysis were used. Results and Discussion. As a result of the research, the concepts of “thinking” and “mental perception” are described, a semantic analysis of their explication at the lexical level is carried out, namely, the most frequent verbal lexemes with the semantics of mental activity based on the material of related languages are identified. The author identifies lexical and semantic groups, which include the verbs of the Erzya and Finnish languages with common semantics “thinking”, “mind”, “thought”, as well as verbal units with positive and neutral connotations. Conclusion. The conclusions made by the author contribute to the study of a group of sensory-moral and mental verbs that make up a significant layer of the vocabulary of the Finnish and Erzya languages, as well as to the development of the lexicology of the studied related languages.

Keywords

• mental activity
• semantic analysis
• verbs
• erzya language
• finnish language