On the Indo-European worldview

The core of Indo-European worldview is the metaphor of light. Birth is conceptualized as «coming into the light», life — as «an ability to see the sun». The world is viewed as «everything under the sun», and the sun is imagined as measure of its being. Divine is conceptualized as light, diurnal and celestial; the gods are situated on the sky. Poetry and cult are associated with the ideas of light and mystic vision. The central part of Indo-European proto-ontology is constituted by the notion of «truth» (*h1s-ont-/*h₁s-ṇt-). Indo-European peoples understand truth as specific «genuine» state of being that has such qualities as order, firmness, goodness, embodied in different forms; truth also designates poetic word that should uncover genuine being of cosmos. Poetic practice of truth is a central event of rite and praising. It is necessary to understand the specificity of truth on the basis of specificity of Indo-European verb of being (*h₁es-) that is used in imperfective aspect / present tense, as copula and existential verb with positive connotation. Semantic complex truth-being-openness-word-glory-light is the core of Indo-European worldview that makes it specific and different from other language worldviews (e. g. Australian languages, where the acoustic metaphor is widespread).

Keywords

Indo-European studies, Indo-European poetry, language worldview, semantic typology, mythological thinking, linguistic relativity

Received

15.08.2015

Publication date

15.08.2015

Number of characters

1371

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GOST	Boroday S. On the Indo-European worldview // Voprosy Jazykoznanija – 2015. – Issue 4 C. 60-90 [Electronic resource]. URL: http://ras.jes.su/vopjaz/s0373658x0011256-0-1-en (circulation date: 27.04.2024).
MLA	Boroday, Sergey Ju "On the Indo-European worldview." Voprosy Jazykoznanija 4 (2015):60-90.
APA	Boroday S. (2015). On the Indo-European worldview. Voprosy Jazykoznanija (4), pp.60-90

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