Concept “cow” (“bull”) as an archetype in ancient written texts

Abstract

The 21st century is characterized as the century of globalization, the integration of cultures, which, of course, leaves its mark on the development of cognitive linguistics. Linguistics as a science of language, reflects all the changes that occur in the thinking and speech behavior of modern society. Cognitive linguistics makes it possible to identify and trace the logical foundations of the emergence and development of the human language as a general cultural phenomenon of human life and its features within the framework of a national culture. Cognitive studies in the language bring people together with different levels of development, culture and religious affiliation, which is necessary in the high-tech age, as they promote tolerance, religious tolerance and mutual respect. The article analyzes the mythological and religious texts of different peoples and faiths in order to identify one of C. Jung’s archetypes. It is a collective unconscious modeling function of certain words. Three centuries ago R. Descartes called such archetypes “the alphabet of human thoughts”. Then this expression was partially used in the late 1650s by the mathematician Blaise Pascal, and later applied in the works of G. Leibniz at the end of the 17th century. It is noteworthy that Descartes, Pascal, C. Jung and some other famous scholars were among the first in linguistics and the history of philosophical teachings to point out the importance of studying the symbolic primitives of thought in linguistic culture. They believed that such archetypes, thanks to symbolism, are part of the general linguistic picture of the world. At the same time the analysis was carried out, confirming one of the main provisions of modern cognitive linguistics about the interplay of language and culture, the originality of the linguistic picture of the world put forward in the Middle Ages by E. B. de Condillac, later proclaimed by W. von Humbolt, and underlying Sapir-Wharf’s theory of linguistic relativity.
Not trying to “grasp the immensity”, the author of the article did not set a goal to indicate the use of the tokens “bull” and “cow” in different ancient languages. For example, in Asia and the East they acquire individual meaning in the group of Semitic languages (Arabic, etc.) or Turkic-speaking (Turkish, etc.). They are beyond the scope of our study. Comparisons and comparisons of these lexemes only in Russian and Hindi and a group of Indonesian languages come into view. Some other isolated parallels relate to the so-called “background information”. The study relies on a systematic analysis of the famous anthropologist K. Levy-Strauss and on the analogy method, widely used by linguists, culturologists, and anthropologists.