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METAPHORS AND IMAGE SCHEMAS IN SELKUP // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2013. Issue 2 (2). P. 9-15

This paper focuses on linguistic categorization which involves the study of roles of various linguistic items in the process of categorization of the world. Metaphor plays a significant role in categorization of the world as it manifests the process of thinking. G.Lakoff and M.Johnson made a major contribution to the development of the theory of categorization and designed the theory which offers a consistent description of metaphor as a cognitive mechanism and demonstrates a potential in applied studies. Each metaphor has a source domain, which is concrete and athropocentric, and a target domain. In this paper the functioning of metaphors is discussed based on the data of Selkup, one of the indigenous languages of Siberia, in which man and body parts are the most common source domain. The theory of schemas developed by G. Lakoff is one of the foundatations of cognitive linguistics. G. Lakoff focuses on the following conceptual schemas: container, partwhole, source-path-goal. In the present paper the functioning of these schemas is discussed based on Selkup data. The Selkup data show that anthropocentrism is characteristic of the language and human body is the main source domain for metaphorical expressions. This project has two prospects for further research. On the one hand, it is the study of anthropomorphic metaphors – linguistic expressions which are drawn from the source domain of human body and emotions. On the other hand, the Selkup language contains a great number of naturomorphic metaphors the source domain for which constitute animals and plants.

Keywords: cognitive linguistics, conceptual schema, metaphor, Selkup language