Swedish parallels of Belarusian proverbs: Structural-semantic modeling

Abstract

The article is devoted to the identification and differentiation of Swedish parallels of the most common Belarusian proverbs according to the nature of interlingual correlation. The goal involves the use of interlingual structural-semantic modeling of proverbs to identify complete proverbial analogues in different languages, identical structural models of proverbs, identical proverbial images and concepts. The material for the study was 320 Swedish proverbs, which are interlingual correlates of Belarusian proverbs. Proverbs-analogues in the Swedish and Belarusian languages are differentiated according to the nature of the interlingual community into two typologically significant groups: universal proverbs and international proverbs. Interlingual correlates of Swedish and Belarusian proverbs, which have the same structural models, are differentiated into several typologically significant groups depending on the nature of the variability of the lexical composition, due to the difference in the conceptual and figurative plan of proverbs. As a result of the study, the authors come to the conclusion that in the Swedish language there are a significant number of proverbs that are full or partial correspondences of the most commonly used Belarusian proverbs. A comparative analysis based on the structural-semantic modeling of proverbs made it possible to differentiate Swedish and Belarusian proverbial parallels into three typologically significant groups of units: similar proverbs, proverbs with identical structural models, proverbs with identical images and concepts. Swedish proverbs containing images and concepts identical to Belarusian proverbs are characterized by partial ethnocultural marking of their content, as well as the absence of a strict connection between the correlation in the content of proverbs in different languages and the presence of identical images and concepts in proverbs. The absence of such a connection indicates the typological similarity of the figurative-conceptual spaces of the Swedish and Belarusian proverbial pictures of the world, in which manifestations of interlingual community and national specificity are deeply mutually determined.