The scientifi c and philosophical presentation of the concept “space” and its explication in Erzya-Mordvin and Finnish languages

Introduction. The article discusses the concept of “space” from the point of view of scientifi c, philosophical and linguistic concepts, describes the historical genesis of this phenomenon, starting from ancient philosophy and mythology to the present. Content characteristics of space in the works of famous philosophers and linguists are given. The purpose of the article is to identify and describe one of the main lexical means of representing the concept of “space”, in this case, verbs, on the basis of two distantly related languages Erzya and Finnish, to reveal common features in the expression of spatial relations in these languages. Materials and Methods. The material of the study was illustrative examples obtained as a result of continuous and partial sampling from texts of various genre and functional styles, including print media, publications of a scientifi c and educational nature, various dialect and folklore texts included in the linguistic corpus KORP. The main research methods were synchronous and comparative analysis, as well as the method of descriptive and complex analysis of linguistic material. Results and Discussion. One of the central means of conveying spatial relations in the Erzya and Finnish languages are verbs. Along with verbs that have the semantics of movement and location, spatial meanings can express verbs of various semantic groups, such as speaking, non-directional action, state, physical action. The classifi cation of Erzya and Finnish verbs is given, built on the principle of semantic characteristics and including three groups, each of which is represented by two subgroups. Conclusion. The study made it possible to reveal the scientifi c, philosophical and linguistic essence of the concept of space, taking into account historical processes, as well as to identify ways of its explication on the material of verbal lexemes that have spatial semantics in the Erzya and Finnish languages.