Onomaconcept as a language unit of nomadic conceptosphere

Abstract

The article represents the methods relevant for onomaseology and gives the results of the etimological analysis of the ethnonyms of the medieval nomadic tribes. It offers a new term onomaconcept, whose structure modeling enables to reveal the conceptual semantics of ethnonym. Onomaconcept as a type of linguacultural concept can “unfold” pre-ethnonym and ethnonym meaning of the onim under study. The methods of studying the structure of onomaconcept involve the following particular techniques: the method of conceptual analysis; the method of component analysis enabling to study the dictionary definitions of onomaconcept; the method of sememic analysis enabling to revel the archisemes that contextually become conceptual signs developing the notional basis of concept; the method of conceptual analysis of metaphor elaborating an image component of onomaconcept; the onomaseological method describing the ethnocultural and ethnohistorical background of a concept, and the semasiological method. The study of the congeneric names of nomadic tribes has revealed the system of onomaconcepts verbalized by ethnonyms. The reconstruction of the conceptual field of a congeneric name using onomaseological and conceptual analysis has enabled, first, to establish the ethimological meaning of onim and, second, to model the conceptosphere of nomadic consciousness. The complex methods of the analysis of onimic lexics have enabled to restore the system of archaic mental mindsets, reflections, and worldview system of medieval nomadism as completely as possible. The studies of such ethnonyms as Mongol, Tungus, Churchzhen’, and others in the context of their linguistic origin and etymology remain arguable in many respects. The linguaconceptual description of the nomadic linguistic worldview has enabled to reconstruct mental mindsets and the worldview of the nomadic consciousness at the period of establishing the Altai languages, for instance, and at the early stages of its existence. Thus, the onomaseological method of studying onims as verbalized onomaconcepts has enabled to consider an onim as the ethnocultural and ethnohistorical text deciphered by reconstructing the semantic archetype and conceptual archiseme and thereby to justify the author’s hypothesis for nomadic conceptosphere. The conceptual approach to the analysis of ethnonyms based on the corpse of appellative lexica of typologically non-related languages has enabled to reveal the diachronic Ural-Altai areal linguistic union within the territory under study, which allowed us to make a conclusion about some typologically similar phenomena in the languages related to different linguistic families – the Mongol and the Samoyed.