engleski

English and Croatian proverbs of humain emotions and character. A cognitive contrastive view

This paper presents an onomasiological study of English and Croatian proverbs of selected emotions and character traits. Assuming a cognitive linguistic framework, we show that both the universal aspects of proverb interpretation and the culturally rich specifics can be accommodated in a cognitive linguistic approach to proverbs. This, we hope, can take us a few steps closer to a holistic theory of proverb comprehension, which “must accommodate both universalizing cognitive factors and highly specific cultural determinants”(Bradbury 2002: 263). In our analysis we do not detail the lexical and structural correspondences between ‘translationally equivalent’ proverbs, but contrast the conceptual categories and cognitive models which the proverbs draw on in referring to the emotions of LOVE and FEAR and the character traits of GREED and LOYALTY. We explore the extent to which the two languages exploit some (potentially) universal concepts and cognitive mechanisms and the extent to which their respective conceptual repertoires diverge in this functional domain.

proverbs, Cognitive Linguistics, emotions, character traits

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