Distinguishing between animals and other living beings in the Russian linguistic worldview


2019. №2, 31-46

Тatyana V. Krylova
Vinogradov Russian Language Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; ta-kr@yandex.ru

Abstract:

This paper analyzes the differences between the scientific and naïve language classification of living beings presented in the everyday Russian language. In particular, the paper discusses the boundary separating animals from other creatures in the Russian linguistic worldview. The author investigates the semantics of zoonyms životnoe ‘animal’, živnost’ ‘livestock’, xiščnik ‘predator’, xiščnyj ‘predatory’ and their use in everyday language and in scientific language.

Keywords
language worldview
lexicography
lexicon
naïve worldview
Russian
semantics
zoonyms

For citation:

Krylova Т. V. Distinguishing between animals and other living beings in the Russian linguistic worldview. Voprosy Jazykoznanija, 2019, 2: 31–46.

Acknowledgements:

This paper is supported by the Fundamental research program of the Presidium of Russian Academy of Sciences, project No. 19-012-00291А «Preparation of the fourth edition of the Active dictionary of the Russian language» (2019–2021), and by Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project No. 16-29-09614 «Principles and technologies of machine processing for social network texts in Russian». I would like to express my gratitude to my dear teacher Yuri Apresyan, who taught me selflessly how to think and to write logically.