The cognitive metaphor of the container and the linguo-cultural specificity of time conceptualization

The universal physical experience of people generates general cognitive schemes of its processing. One of them is a metaphor of the container that originally conceptualized the human comprehension of space, and then - other aspects of reality, including the time. Temporal containers are filled with non-object manifestations of the world - events and processes, these concepts are represented mainly by nouns and adverbs. On this background of interest is the linguo-cultural specificity of denominative "temporal" verbs such as zimovat' that exist in a number of Slavic languages. However, most of these units cannot be translated from the Russian language without using analytical forms. In the classification of predicates the analyzed verbs belong to the class of "activity", "occupation", "behavior". Their semantic leitmotif can be summarized as 'to spend, to live a continuum of time called by the derivative base name, filling this period with typical (indicative) actions'. The subject of such actions is primarily a person (no-chevat'), and most frequently - only a person (ponedelnichat'_1-2, dedovat', borozdit', vecherit'). The scope of time-container that includes actions varies from a century (vekovat' - 'spend one's lifetime') to an hour (chasovat' - 'spend the last hours before death'), yet remains within the limits resulting by the human nature. These verbs do not only outline the temporal horizons of traditional culture, but also mark its existential and ethical orientations, norms and values. The millennial traditional culture is based on the concept of non-novelty, repeatability, eternal return of all forms of activity. It could be the reason for the formation of temporal verbs from nouns denoting continua included in the cyclic model of time. Generally described verb units conceptualize everyday life, the static world "now" which is filled with activities that support human corporeality - work and eating. The literary subsystem of modern Russian language has a few temporal verbs, but, taking into account the "all-Russian potential" realized by living dialects, this fragment of the Russian language picture of the world becomes complete and detailed. Dialect units are the result of the Russian language consciousness, just like other words not limited locally. Temporal verbs, which are a tool of non-discursive interpretation of the essence of time as a container of actions, evidence of the sustained interest of the Russian language culture in this aspect of the temporal experience of the person.

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