The zoomorphic metaphor "bear" in Russian, English and the languages of Southern Siberia

The paper is devoted to the comparative study of the zoomorphic metaphors including the zoonym "bear" in the Russian, English, Tatar, Khakass, Tuvinian, and Altai languages. It analyzes the most prominent features of the metaphors as well as its classification based on the type of sematic correlation of the metaphor's elements. The purpose of this paper is to detect common and special national mechanisms of metaphorization in the given languages and to explain these phenomena within the ethnolinguistic approach. Zoomorphic metaphor studies play a crucial role in cognitive linguistics as such metaphors tend to preserve in a language for a lengthy period of time, which helps scientists to study the cognitive mechanisms that affect language evolution throughout its history. It is believed that zoomor-phic metaphors appear due to the human disposition to explore the world constantly comparing it to our bodies, feelings and mind. That is why one of the main features of those metaphors is its semantic duality: a man is compared to a beast and a beast is compared to a man at the same time, so we describe the way animals look like and behave with the words we usually describe people or their dwellings and tools. The associations between the image of a man and the image of an animal underlie the formation of a metaphor. Those associations are divided into two types: a) universal associations which can be found in all or in the majority of the languages studied and b) special associations. Today zoonym studies are particularly important for conducting research of the linguistic picture of the world. A zoonym encodes the key cultural, psychological and social features common for a particular language community and its culture. It is also obvious that such metaphors are always emotionally marked as the image at the core of a particular metaphor is the most typical, recognizable and easy-to-decipher for a native speaker. Through metaphor studies we can detect the universal cognitive mechanisms shared by representatives of different language communities and cultures. For example, when we call a person a "bear" we usually refer to their atypical height or weight, and this type of zoomorphic metaphor can be found in most languages, provided that the representatives of those language communities know what a bear is. On the other hand, comparing the language data gathered from different language families we cannot deny that special national mechanisms of metaphorization are predominant, which proves that each language community is unique not only in terms of its culture, but also their language and, consequently, cognition.

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