‘Heart’ as a universal mental concept (a case study of Chinese and Russian language worldviews)

The article examines the concept ‘heart’ in the semantic-and-cognitive aspect, identifies nominative components with subsequent comparison of the content in Russian and Chinese. The author proposes an analysis of this concept conducted separately for the zones of correlation and cultural suggestion. The zone of language correlation was studied through an analysis of the internal form of lexemes containing the component ‘heart’ as well as a component analysis of mental vocabulary, which showed the presence of an invariant hyperseme ‘heart’. In Chinese, the correlation zone was studied in accordance with the presence of the component within a hieroglyph or as part of an indivisible combination of hieroglyphs. The suggestion zone was analyzed based on paroemias and phraseological units. The study showed a high level of universality of the conceptual field. However, there are a number of differences established in the linguistic pictures of the world (in the formal structure of the lexicosemantic system): different positions of the ‘heart’ component in some lexemes and combinations; the implicitness and explicitness of the component do not always coincide; there can be difference in the style-related use of the concept. ‘Heart’ is a concept functioning as a hyperonym of the whole set of mental vocabulary in both Chinese and Russian. The study refutes the statements that in the Russian language there is no pronounced mental component in the concept ‘heart’ and that ‘heart’ does not form metaphors associated with soil and plants, which is observed in Chinese. The article clarifies the translation of the dictionary entry ‘heart’ in Chinese. The author has identified and compared the nuclear and peripheral zones of the concept, established the central importance of ‘heart’ in the conceptualization of mental processes. The nuclear zone is polystructural, it consists of the components thoughts, feelings, desires. Each of the components is able to form a separate semantic field. The peripheral zone is represented by the components pity, anger, memory, like-mindedness, speech not out loud, and others. The frequency-value structure of the nominative field coincides in the two languages. The study was conducted based on the material of 2,000 mental lexemes, 100 phraseological units and proverbs, contexts of the Russian language with the element ‘heart’, 200 phraseological units, 200 lexemes with the implicit component ‘heart’ as well as expanded and minimum contexts of the Chinese language selected from dictionaries and Internet sources. The article contains about 60 Chinese phraseological units with the component ‘heart’ and their translation into Russian, which could also be of interest to researchers studying related topics. The practical significance of the research lies in the possibility of using the material in explanatory and ideographic lexicography related to mental vocabulary and phraseology as well as in courses on the Russian language for foreigners and in the theory of translation.