Perception of universal concepts by native speakers of the Russian language: the experience of an associative experiment

This article describes the results of an associative experiment aimed at identifying associative connections of lexemes denoting basic universal concepts. The study identified the main thematic groups associated in the minds of native speakers with the proposed stimulus words. A comparative analysis of the data obtained as a result of the experiment with the materials of the "Russian Associative Dictionary" is presented. Various types of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations between stimulus and reaction are considered.