Spatial metaphor models of semantic field “fear” in the Russian language

About the author:

Alexander A. Gorbunov, Postgraduate Student, Department of Applied and Theoretical Linguistics, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia; a.a.gorbunov@utmn.ru

Abstract:

The article hypothesizes that locative verbs participate in the process of conceptualising a range of emotions and feelings that form a semantic field “fear”. The purpose of the article is to identify spatial metaphor models included in this field based on the analysis of collocations consisting of the nomination of emotional state and verbs denoting movement/location and specifically the metaphoric expressions formed by them. In the course of the work, a corpus study was conducted on the material of the main subcorpus of the RNC. Over 700 collocations were identified, their corresponding concordances were studied, and expressions were grouped according to metaphor models. The results of the study include the primary findings: most of the collocations of this type are found with the lexeme “fear”, personification is often present in collocations with a nomination being the subject of sentences, in the role of object/modifier — causal relations are traced. The general conclusions include a list of spatial metaphor models.

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