Using zoomorphisms for the presentation of emotions (a case study of the Erzya language)

The lexical and semantic layer of zoomorphisms appears in speech with different emotional-expressive coloring and reflects national specificities, beauty, and richness of the language. Zoomorphisms in the Erzya language used to convey emotions have not been studied precisely. The relevance of this study is caused by the need to analyze lexical potential of the Erzya language zoomorphisms. The subject of the analysis is emotive zoomorphisms, which are used to express emotions and emotional state of a person. The aim of the study is to describe, characterize and analyze zoomorphisms used in the Erzya language as emotive lexemes. The theoretical and methodological framework for the study is presented by the works of national and international scholars on the problem of expressing emotivity by the means of the language. The materials for the study were dictionaries, folklore texts and works of fiction. The authors used such methods of linguistic analysis as descriptive and comparative one. To convey emotions people use different lexical units such as nominative words. One of them is zoomorphisms, which are used to express the person’s emotional relationship to the surrounding reality. Zoomorphisms in the Erzya language are analyzed in terms of their differentiation by their emotional value and functional-semantic significance. The lexico-semantic analysis of emotive zoomorphisms made it possible to identify several categories of lexemes in the Erzya language. These lexemes are used to describe such qualitative characteristics of a person as mental abilities, appearance, physical condition, character, moral and ethical attitudes. The description of zoomorphisms with positive and negative meaning made it possible to determine the range of zoomorphisms used to convey negative evaluation and emotions and a group of zoomorphisms used to convey positive emotional evaluation.