| Abstract [eng] |
The aim of the present paper is to analyze and discuss the cases when children’s, women’s or men’s behavior can be conceived as a starting point of world categorization in the Lithuanian language world-view. Attention is paid to the character features of both sexes and children. The examples are drawn from the Contemporary Lithuanian Language Corpus compiled by Corpus Linguistics Centre in Vytautas Magnus University. It is impossible to conceive abstract things via sensations. The language puts in order, what seems incoherent at first sight: it gives names to inconceivable things as well as distinguishes them. Speaking about childish or female behavior, the characteristic features which describe the relationship between the world and other people are mostly verbalized. In the texts, childhood is more frequently related to positive things. All those features, which are specified with the description childish, stand out for their disengagement and simplicity. An adult who has such features is equated with a child at least in one aspect. Thus the attitude to his/her behavior can be twofold: openness and natural emotions are assessed positively. However, there are many cases when childish features of an adult are meant to be a deviation and are condemned or mocked. In the Lithuanian world-view, it is noticed that children are naïve, trustful, lenient, simple, frank, curious, and envious. Women are tender, sensitive, sentimental, careful, and jealous. Thus a woman is ascribed with peculiar female character features. Here dominates not power but the phenomena of intellect and feelings. The whole of constant features of women’s behavior, i.e. character, which is recorded in the language world-view, reveal women as individuals who are inherent with positive relationship with the world and other people. The field of the relation between the personality and oneself is not actualized. [...]. |
