Cultural Connotations of Zoonyms in Tatar and Turkish Proverbs

This article presents an analysis of the semantics of zoonyms that function as components of the proverbs of the Tatar and Turkish languages. Such proverbs are interesting in that they reveal the features characteristic of animals, which a person transfers to himself and translates with their help certain positive, neutral or negative emotions. The names of animals in all languages have in the lexical meaning emotional expressive-evaluative features that serve as the basis for the formation of metaphorical nominations. Zoonomia components of Proverbs are defined as cultural phenomena. The purpose of the study is to identify the cultural connotations of animal names in Tatar and Turkish proverbs.  The main methods used in the work are the methods of contextual analysis and linguocultural interpretation. The material for our reasoning was the Tatar and Turkish proverbs extracted from dictionaries, which include the names of animals. The results of the study of proverbial sources indicate a high particular designation of animals as structural components of proverbs. The frequency of animal names in the proverbs is explained extralinguistically, since animals played an important role in human life, the habits of animals served as the basis for the emergence of many proverbs in the Tatar and Turkish languages. The study of zoonyms, which are part of the Tatar and Turkish proverbs, contributes to a deeper understanding of their national-cultural specifics.

Keywords:

Tatar , Turkish , Proverb , Zoononym , Semantics