Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології

Within the problem of the motivation of etymons it is worth drawing attention to the comparison between etymological reconstruction and the treatment of proverbial key-words. The Polish proverb krew nie wre, człowiek stary (the blood doesn’t boil, an old man) [Черниш, 2003, 185] where we encounter a very elegant alliterative construction, has to exemplify the ramification and heterogeneity of semantic development of *var, and here one of the branches of this development acquires the form of metonymy as the transfer of the heat of human blood. Another clear sample of the corporeal source of the notion of the so called four elements of nature give such proverbs as “Вогонь палить, вода студить” (fire burns, water chills) or “З вогнем не жартуй і воді не вір” (don’t make jokes with fire and don’t believe to water) [Пазяк, 1984, 88]: here the elements are conceived through their interactions with human body. To continue these examples one can compare the Indo-European reconstructions made by Andreyev with paremiological data. Thus the origin of peplolexikon (the terms of dressing) are connected with the role of frost [Андреев, 1986, 208, VIII-8], and an “equation” hereto is to be found in the expression “мороз пішов поза шкірою” (frost is spread under skin); the suggested connection between the notions night and Latin nanciscor = носити “to bring, to bear” is reflected also in such proverbial units with overt alliterations as «ніч понесла, ніч і принесла», «нічліг за собою ніхто не носить» (the night has brought out, the night has also brought to; nobody brings one’s own night lodgings).

As a very important source for the formation of idiomatic expression within the diachronic perspective the particular role of membra corporis must be singled out. “A corporeal map” gives opportunity of tracing partial denotation as the source for further derivation resulting in the formation of idioms. The arguments of semantic derivation within etymons are often of somatic nature. As an example one can take the motivation for the reciprocal approximations of Germ. Schatten = Engl. shadow and schießen -= Engl. to shoot. The reason is to be found in the fact that “a shadow is conceived as something that is slung from, thrown away”, so that it is to deal with mechanical actions; in a similar way the comparison of Germ. triezen, tritzen “to torment, to irritate” with Lith. dirgti, Russ. дергать gives grounds for the conclusion that “the meaning of tormenting is developed from that of stretching” [Левицкий, 1997, p. 122, 35].

Meanwhile the problem arises as to the limits of a human body and subsequently of the scope of somatic images that come into play as non-verbal pictograms. Artificial environment determines the existential condition and is not to be conceived apart. The world as the environment of an earthly and heavenly overgrown human body is to be regarded as the continuation of this body thus creating an inseparable condition of human existence. Perhaps the etymology both of Latin spirit and Slavic дух may serve as the clearest demonstration of the concept of impossibility to exist without air that represents such a body’s continuation. The same circumstance makes us to take into consideration bodily conceived antonyms. Thus one can speak about the dialectics of erect poise as the innate peculiarity of a human body reflected in such semantic fields as night (and sleep) and day (vigilance), senility and youth, birth and death, male and female jobs, sanity and illness, heat and cold (and respectively the group of peplolexicon i.e. the names of dress as the necessary protection). There appears in such a way a whole group of such antonyms that creates a certain pivot for classifying etymons.

Naturally it is necessary to stress that somatic dominants can by no means be reduced to corporeal functions. In the sphere of language the body as such is conceived not as something autonomous but rather as a psychosomatic unity (a nozoological unity, to use the psychological notion), that is as a living animated body and as an inherent part and parcel of social structure. It would be worth reminding the genealogy of numbers, for instance, of five = пять with such its overt and hypothetical cognates as German Faust = пясть, and Finger. Body as the foundation of somatic imagination acts as an agent and incarnation of social relations, as it was shown by E. Benveniste: it would be enough to mention only his famous discovery that *pecu (the source of Latin pecunia and German Vieh) “never denoted a property in the form of cattle” or the history of Latin libertas, Gr.  “free” (with its cognates in German Leute = люд) where “the notion of freedom is formed on the foundation of socialized idea of growth” [Бенвенист, 1995, 56, 213]. It would be here to add that another term Germ. Freiheit (Engl. freedom) being cognate to приязнь “sympathy” put stress upon the feeling of social duty and not pure biological process. As another example let Lewitzki’s dictionary be cited where one finds, for instance, among r-roots such samples of Germanic-Slavic and Germanic-Baltic isoglosses that are represented with German recken (Lithuanian reižti) and their wide nest where primary meaning is expressed in the idea of stretching a body; other samples of the isoglosses as Rand / рубить “a brink, an edge – to hew (to shape an edge)”, raufen / рвать “to tear”, Old Nordic rista / решать “to cut > to solve” are obvious biomechanical terms that determine the semantic contents.

There arises the whole integrated pictographic somatic “alphabet” as a satellite to proverbial idioms building up an auxiliary code. The necessity of the existence of such code ensues from the essence of verbal substance where reproducibility results in codification, and it is human body that becomes the natural basis for the codification. The necessity of reducing textual segments to those of some code betrays itself in the segregation of the features that would be apt for designating the affiliation to a taxonomic class and would become classificatory features. This reducibility is especially clear represented in etymological figures. Proverb satisfying the criterion of fixation & frequentation as a reproducible phrase, the reduction to code is betrayed, and it endowed the phrase with marks of affiliation to the respective semantic class. Thus a chain of consequences becomes traceable where textual reproduction entails codifying reduction. In its turn such reducing affiliation can’t be conceived as an immediate procedure, such correlation of a mark of outer form and imaginary class being only a limit as a “vizier” for orientation. One can say only of approximation to the imagined taxonomy unattainable within a finite etymological nest. One can only say of the infinite convergence of a mark of outer form and the classificatory schemes that are put with the corporeal imagination. As to the reduction it presupposes these residual or sedimentary rests of somatic imaginary system.

Thus it can be said that the code of culture possesses the quality of integrity that semantically ensues from the representation of corporeal integrity creating a kind of counterpoise to the integrity of discourse. In this respect etymons behave similarly to poetonyms (incorporated in a discourse) as they reflect the course of the conceiving of a body’s scheme (to take again the license of using psychological term). In such a way grounds are found for a shrewd conjecture of Giambattista Vico who has written still in 1729: “Peoples that almost as a whole were corporeal… possessed a vivid talent of feeling details… It is true, these faculties belong to conscience, but their roots reach body, and they draw their force from there” [Вико, 356]. The proverbial expression «допік до живих печінок» (he has burnt till the levers alive) makes us recollect the origin of the very somatic term печінка (lever) from the designation of thermal operations that attests the etymological regeneration. In its turn it gives impulse for the further metaphor of the human nature so that the allegory of injure arises⁶⁶⁶. Corporeal scheme can be said to deliver the primary stuff to make up the transferred designations for those allegorical images that proverbs deal with constantly. Os a special significance is that such corporeal images concern first of all the system of verbs. The great invention and formation of Indo-European verbal system of conjugation and of lexical units capable for expansion went hand in hand. One may say the verb and the word be created together. In opposite to the Far Eastern languages of isolation and incorporation as well as to the classifying African languages here the lexeme as the germ for expansive growth and the predicate as the force for completion determine narrative strategies representing corporeal taxonomy.

In its turn the development of transferred designations with the outer form of the direct names of membra corporis presupposes the involvement of the further ingredients of the outer form that include phonological devices of the Signifiers. In particular the outer form’s development involves the enrichment of the field of signifiers and of textual profile with the means of phonology & prosody that could be regarded as the continuation of the mentioned somatic taxonomic order. Phonological profile disclosed as the result of taxonomic reduction betrays the possibility of being conceived within the terms of inner form. The inseparability of the signifying and the signified determines phonological motivational factors of the meaning of utterance. It is absolute semantic polyvalence and not the manifold of relative interpretations that determines stability of semantic transitions and the formation of referential net of the proverbial sentence. This stability at syntactic level prevents the variability of actual division of sentence and results in the development of the germs of versification that become a source for the novelties inherited in free verse and depictive lyrics. Riddles turn out to be a subtype of proverbs with restricted and narrowed sense. In its turn idioms include proverbs as its special formation peculiar as a kind of commonplaces with stable tropes. Idioms are to be conceived as the partial nomination of separate sides of the latent essence to be detected and guessed. It results in mutability of periphrastic descriptions that create circumscription. There are inherent word registers that provide the conditions for the self-description of idiomatic sentence. Besides such enumerative structures of coordinative nature one encounters collocations with subordinate relationship that serve as the expansion of key-words. Thus the very role of key-words as the source for the development of idiomatic sentence presumes the formation of the inherent self-descriptive mechanisms where the idiomatic contents become the subject of reflection enabling the detection of semantic transitions. Proverbial commonplaces become the places of a tight interplay between phonological devices (the inner rhyme taking here the priority) and lexical attraction within the syntactic scheme of phrases as essential forces for the so called profile-making of notions – the idea proposed by J. Bartminski to designate the transition from one way of the treatment of a thing to another⁶⁶⁷. Alliteration and cognate phenomena can well serve as a specimen of such profiles that make the notions reveal their hidden connotations.

The formation of profile can be conceived within the Humboldt’s approach as the transition from inner to outer form and respectively from text to code that presumes approximation to a supposed taxonomic order of the world and involves therefore the signifiers necessary for designating these taxonomic classificatory divisions. Textual segments bear connotations that needs must be accommodated with the affiliation to the presumed taxonomic classes, so the involved signifying means are to be used respectively. The concept of profile means that motivation of a code’s units attains its asymptotic limits. In particular lexical compatibility is reconceived as “a bridge of rhyme”, so that the motivational net becomes extended over the realm of signifiers involved as the elements of outer form. The signified and the signifiers now converge to this asymptotic limit of profile where their difference becomes irrelevant.

One can say of a relative autonomy of profile that functions in the manner of lexical attraction. It was already J. Grimm who attracted attention to the analogy between lexical attraction and the harmony of sounds building stable sequences: «Erscheinungen der Lautlehre sind denen der Syntax sehr ähnlich, gleich einzelnen lauten an ihrer stelle wirken auch einzelne Worte im Satz auf einander hin, bald vor, bald zurückgreifend» [Grimm, 1866, 312]. It has been shown that whispering prosody ia the generic sign of enchanting incantations [Зелинский, 1897, 37]; the example of the kind «… А з бабиного живота / Та на дідові ворота …» ‘from grandmother’s belly to grandfather’s door’ [Зелинский, 1897, 58] demonstrates the confrontation of the morphemes * жив- / * вор- displays here the obvious metathesis together with the alteration (r / zh). Therefore phonological motivation comes into play so that the profile reflected in rhyme reveals itself as the power of combining lexical units.

It is the phenomenon of rhyme where such correlation of inner and outer form (of the signified and the signifier) and subsequently their reciprocal motivation can be demonstrated⁶⁶⁸. Profile can be said to be reconceived in rhyme as the transition of inner form to its outer representation. The phenomenon of alliterated profile-making is to be encountered even in ancient Latin (where there weren’t rhymed verses). For example, the rhymed proverb “ille lavat laterem / qui castigat mulierem” (literally, he washes bricks who punishes a wife) [Werner, 1966, 59] includes alliterated idiomatic expression “lavare laterem” (to wash bricks) that means “to perform futile actions”. Another example of such a profile-making of notions in the alliterated idiom is to be found in the proverb “salva res est, saltat senex” (when the job is successful the elder dances). The image of “senex saltans” (the dancing elder) as the symbol of exaggerated joyful irritation coincides in its turn with that of “mors saltans” (the dancing death) that has become one of the important vehicles of occidental mentality. Thus phonological regularities of proverbial versified forms participate in the formation of new ideas and become a motivational force as far as they belong to the class of commonplaces.

The role of outer form becomes obvious in the comparison of different textual versions of a proverb. For instance there are different versions of the proverb не клади пальця в рот (don’t put a finger in the mouth) with the substitutes for в зуби / до вогню, не клади / не пхай (in the teeth / fire, put / push) that allow various emphatic stresses due to their phonological “faces”. In the English proverb life is made up of little things one has chosen little and not small or tiny perhaps due to alliteration with the initial substantive. The same may concern the proverb утро вечера мудренее (the morning is wiser than the evening) where alliteration of the formant -r- probably becomes a motivational argument. Such selection of synonyms passing to the phonological conditions may be described as the phenomenon analogous to the just mentioned “profile”. Phonology becomes the factor accompanying such profile-making in that it enables selection of the versions favorable for the purport of the entire utterance.

The effects of inner rhyme (Germ. Stabreim) gain a special importance for proverbs due to their opportunities for the profile-making of utterance. Such effects are achieved with the disclosing of the inner form of words. In etymology especially rhyming reinforces the capability of lexical interaction in the collocations [Маковский, 2007, 100]. The mere confrontation of such pairs as забавка - задавка, вінчатися - кінчатися , бідна – гідна (toy – noose, to marry – to finish, poor - worthy) reveals not only the importance of a single phoneme enabling the semantic distinction between them but also the stress upon their semantic peculiarities in the respective utterances. As an example of such profile-making with the phonological means the proverb хоч голий та гострий (although nude but acute) may serve where the situational synonymy is stressed. Similar case is to be found in голодний з’їсть і холодне (that who is hungry will eat the cold thing as well). Inner rhyme helps here to detect the figure of hendiadys (hungry - cold). It is worth mentioning also the so called paronymic transformation as the substitution in a version of a proverb based on the resemblance of words: for instance such is the origin of the locution сесть в калошу ← сесть в калужу (лужу) (to sit in a boot (galosh) ← to sit in a puddle) [Мокиенко, 1980, 139].

The fact that specific phonological conditions are deliberately created in the proverbial texts may be demonstrated with the cases of obvious onomatopoetic effects where neologisms of nonsense bear witness to it. Such effects can be exemplified with the following Ukrainian and Polish riddles: <прибігли штрики – брики, ухватили талду – балду> (solution: ‘wolves and pigs’), <żeby nie moja sinda – pinda, to sinduk – pinduk byłby po sam pęp> (solution: ‘broom and rubbish’) [Номис, № 122; Kasjan, 1996, 191]. The same onomatopoetic effects are to be found in the following proverbs: <громада, громада, гайняна їх рада; потапці, потапці вліз чорт у лапці; оце дудлить, аж у горлі клекотить> [Номис, № 13288, 14068, 14127]. Thus phonological profile becomes permanently reconceived semantically.

The involvement of the interaction between the inner and outer forms comes to the consequence that the very concept of phoneme (as a bunch of differential features serving to discern semantic meanings) presumes the motivational aspects of such interaction when phonemic difference in the same positions of a sound chain allows discerning words⁶⁶⁹. Evidently the case of rhymed words (and alliterated as well) gives especially wide range of opportunities for such immediate comparison of phonemes as the complexes of differential features in the corresponding positions. Proverbs are interesting for the existence of numerous samples where the distinction of the meanings of corresponding words is determined with the single phoneme belonging to the root morpheme. One finds, for instance such clear exemplifications of the use of phonological distinctive features as the oppositions of the dental and the labial <котяча забавка – мишам задавка (бавити - давити); кого слова не беруть, з того шкуру деруть (бере - дере)>, of variants of the guttural (h/k) <як схоче то й на гору скоче>, of consonant clusters (pl/sk) < ані з плечей, ані з очей; чоловік в корчмі скаче, жінка вдома плаче > and some singular oppositions that have decisive role for semantic distinctions < з ким вінчатися, з тим кінчатися; хай виджу, з ким сиджу; хай бідна, аби гідна >. The same concerns such Lat. proverbs (from Seneca) as “quod licet Iovi, non licet Bovi” (what passes to Jove doesn’t pass to an ox) with the alternation i / b; “cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum” (to whom belongs the soil it belongs also till the heaven) where s / c differ the meanings; “clericus in cella gaudet veniente puella” (a clergyman in a cell rejoices at the coming girl) with the alternation of a consonant and a syllable c / pu. A very eloquent case of such alternation can be exemplified with the 99-th verse of the famous K. Zinoviiv’s collection⁶⁷⁰: