Representations of Motion in Space as a Source Conceptual Domain in the Russian Metaphor Terminology Formation

The article focuses on the investigation of the degree to which representations of motion in space, expressed by verbs of the subject's translational motion and the object's motion, are involved in the metaphor terminology formation in the Russian language. The aim of the article is to describe the system of frame structures and, accordingly, the language units representing the ideas of motion in space, and the system's role in the formation of the semantics of metaphoric terms. The general core approach used in the study is represented by cognitive terminology studies, which aim to investigate the conceptual models that are considered as bases for the semantics of terminological units. The analysis of the metaphor terminology was carried out on the basis of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the metaphor modeling approach developed by the Russian metaphor researchers, which contributed to further development of the above mentioned theory by adding achievements gained in lexical semantics. The material for the study was a selection of metaphoric terms from ten scientific areas (343) derived from verbs meaning motion in space. The analysis has shown that the motivating basis for metaphoric terms based on representation of motion in space are represented by 41 verbs: the object's motion (25), the subject's translational motion (17). The representations are not equally distributed. For Philology, Physics, Biology and Sociology, the conceptual structures of translational motion are more relevant. For Chemistry, Geology, Psychology, Computer Science and Philosophy, the models of the object's motion are more relevant. The formation of terminology is more often represented by the concept of translational motion (181 terms) than by the object's motion (162 terms), but the frame structure of the object's motion is more diverse (25) than the structure of translational motion (17). It is possible to speak about the higher degree of universality for the frame structures of translational motion, since the ratio of universal/unique in this group is 6/5 (to walk, to jump, to flow, to run, to fall, to migrate/to reach, to climb, to dive, to crawl, to wander). Representations for the object's motion provide a different proportion: 4/10 (to move, to carry, to lead and to pull/to throw, to turn over, to rotate, to throw away, to roll, to throw, to splash, to lift, to remove (to take off), to push). The most universal and the most frequent in the metaphoric term formation is the frame structure represented by the reference lexeme to walk (to go). In the processes of metaphor conceptualization for term formation, the original frame structure is not completely involved. The slots “change” or “process” are more consistently realized. While applying the frame structures connected with the object's motion, the slots “the subject of an action” and “the mode of an action” are not generally used. When applying the structures of translational motion in space, the subject of an action is regularly replaced. In general, the basic frame structures for motivating units are consistently reflected in the meaning of the terms.

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